Forest Hills School District gave families a look inside English Language Arts classrooms at three schools in its September Curriculum Up Close feature, published Sunday, Sept. 27.

The monthly series profiled second-grade teacher Ms. Taylor at Wilson Elementary School, fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Thorp at Sherwood Elementary School and English III teacher Ms. Renard at Anderson High School.

At Wilson, students practiced new vocabulary with picture matching and hand signals during a read-aloud of "Girl Wonder" by Deborah Hopkinson. At Sherwood, fifth graders moved from reading "My Teacher Is an Alien" by Bruce Coville into creative writing. Students pitched their own prompts, including "Get Ready With Me: Alien Edition" and "Design an alien ship through words."

At Anderson High School, Renard opened each class with 10 minutes of independent reading. On Fridays, she read the first five minutes of a new book aloud, a practice she called "First Chapter Friday." Students could then add the title to a "to be read" list kept in their notebooks.

The district's K-5 core English curriculum is "Being a Reader and Being a Writer" by Collaborative Classroom, according to the district's literacy framework. Three other Forest Hills elementary schools, Ayer, Mercer and Summit, received the Governor's Science of Reading Champion Award in March, one of only six Hamilton County schools ever honored.