Critical Readers, Writers and Thinkers

To equip our students with 21st century literacy skills equal to the challenges of post-secondary education and the workplace, Des Moines Public Schools provides appropriate curricula at all developmental levels.

In the elementary grades, we ensure an integrated approach to building essential foundational skills beginning with our youngest learners.

As our students grow we provide exposure to texts of exceptional craft across a wide range of genres, cultures, and time periods. These works offer insights across the spectrum of the human condition and inspire students to ponder and problem-solve.  We value a breadth and depth of literature and non-fiction texts.

Our goal is to steadily increase complexity and sophistication of content and structure in classroom texts and develop students who read, write and think critically.