Empowering Children
Broadening Their Horizon
Creating a Lifetime of Success
An Oral Language Program for Pre-K
Oral language is the foundation of all literacy. Preschoolers must be able to understand language at an oral level to be expected to understand it at the text level. GrapeSEED is a research-aligned, teacher-led program that helps preschool students build oral language and critical listening skills.
For over 50 years, we at GrapeSEED have been invested in a singular mission: the success of the next generation. We are dedicated to providing hope for future aspirations, possibilities for a beloved career, and expanded horizons that allow individuals to dream bigger.
The GrapeSEED Methodology
Using the Functional-Notional Approach, GrapeSEED is focused on the practical and immediate use of the English language. Functions, expressions, and vocabulary are acquired with the primary goals of comprehension and communication rather than the cumbersome memorization of grammatical rules and lists of words.
Preschoolers learn to listen to and recognize English and to process and speak their thoughts—without having to first think in, and then interpret from, their first or heritage language. By teaching English in the way that children naturally learn (through continuous exposure), GrapeSEED joyfully builds confidence, meaning and fluency.
GrapeSEED Framework
GrapeSEED’s all-inclusive, curriculum uses a controlled vocabulary to develop oral fluency and proficiency, while providing students with all the skills to develop basic reading fluency, writing awareness and readiness, and writing skills.
GrapeSEED is unique because its framework was built upon five carefully integrated platforms: Vertical Phonics, the Functional-Notional Approach, a Controlled Vocabulary chosen specifically for preschoolers, Language Arts Skills that support the development of oral communication ability, and an opportunity for Repeated Exposure and Practice. It is the purposeful way in which all five of these platforms are seamlessly integrated that make GrapeSEED the best way for preschoolers to acquire oral language skills.
GrapeSEED's Core Components
The GrapeSEED program integrates vocabulary and language expressions using songs, action activities, chants, poems, and stories to ensure efficient learning. It consistently balances the amount of new information being presented with the amount of previously covered information being reviewed, providing practice and repetition content that leads efficiently to development. Additionally, GrapeSEED repeated exposure and practice (REP) through the student app provides supplemental practice that deepens comprehension.
GrapeSEED Aligns with Early Learning Standards
✓ Physical Development: Students are asked to perform both large motor movements such as crawling, jumping, and slithering like a snake, and fine motor movements such as hand and finger motions to coincide with words.
✓ Social Development: Understanding how to communicate, share, make friends, and get along with others is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social development incorporated in GrapeSEED.
✓ Emotional Development: Children learn how to manage and appropriately express their own emotions and feelings such as happiness, curiosity, surprise, and sadness.
✓ Cognitive Development: GrapeSEED provides children with the means of paying attention and noticing the world around them through both structured and unstructured activities, and interactions with others.
✓ Language and Literacy: Through our components, students build the bridge to literacy by focusing on concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics, letters, colors, numbers, etc.