Our Language Arts focus is on helping teachers help their students develop strategies to become more effective readers and writers. We plan with classroom teachers and work together as a Professional Learning Community to develop reading and writing workshops in classrooms. We plan and model lessons with whole groups, small groups, and individual students. We organize Family Literacy Night Programs at school. Recently, Diane Payne and Kathy Key worked with the Rotary Club of McLean, Virginia, to launch a joint literacy project. We honored Scott Mills, Kathy Martin, and Tim Morahan from the Rotary Club of McLean for their contribution as volunteers in the project.

In addition to planning with teachers and working with students, Kathy Kee oversees the Book Room, where teachers can check out books to use for instruction. She works with Jackie Hechtkopf, our librarian, as a liaison to Reading Is Fundamental, which, along with the PTA, provides funding for three distributions of books for the children each year.

Elizabeth Miller and Megan Kratz provide additional support with the Reading Recovery Program. These teachers work with first grade students to develop independent reading strategies, by working one-on-one with children who need extra intervention in learning to read.

Our school is a Literacy Collaborative™ School. Literacy Collaborative™ is a professional development model designed to support literacy instruction in grades K-6. A school-based literacy coordinator works with students, teaches courses, and coaches teachers to help them implement reading and writing instruction. The literacy coordinator helps teachers refine their instruction to meet the literacy needs of all students.We have two Literacy Collaborative Coordinators, Diane Payne for the primary grades and Ashley Davis for the upper grades.

By working closely as a Language Arts team, Diane Payne, Ashley Davis, and Kathy Kee support Timber Lane’s mission of being a school for continuous student and teacher learning. Other programs the Language Arts team supports: Read Across America and public librarian visits.