English Language Arts

Students will develop skills such as speaking, listening, reading and writing in order to communicate in different ways in a variety of situations.

“Art” is a way of communicating an idea. The goal of “art” is to communicate an idea.

Now add the word “language” to that concept. The goal of “language arts” is to be able to use a language proficiently in order to communicate an idea.

That’s it. Nothing scary or intimidating. Just learning how to communicate ideas through language. You’ve been teaching language arts to your children naturally since they were born.

The Parts of Language Arts

Since we want our children to be proficient at communicating ideas through language, we want to make sure we cover all the ways language occurs. So language arts include the four main components of

Listening,
Reading,
Speaking, and
Writing.

Everything that relates to listening, speaking, reading, and writing in your selected language can be considered part of your language arts program.

Teachers through the years have tried to break down that big goal of “communicating ideas through language” into individual skills to work on (as teachers are apt to do). Most language arts programs will include these specific skills.