educational program design
The Explicit Curriculum
Here are the general academic skills we intend for our students to acquire before they leave the River School.
- Language Arts: Students will demonstrate the ability to read, write, listen, speak in multiple forms of expression (written, oral, multimedia) and demonstrate communication skills appropriate to setting and audience. They will comprehend and critically interpret multiple forms of expression from various sources, writers, and cultures. Students will critically evaluate their work and the work of others.
- Creative Arts: Students will demonstrate a fundamental body of knowledge and technical skill in at least one of the following areas; visual arts, drama, or music. Students will critically evaluate their work and the work of others.
- Math: Students will use mathematical reasoning, concepts, and logical thinking to solve problems; understand mathematical concepts; communicate mathematical ideas; connect mathematics to other studies and their own lives; articulate their understanding of the beauty and power of math (e.g. math’s universality, patterns in nature, and elegant solutions); invent mathematical procedures that allow them to compute and perform basic operations; acknowledge, understand, and apply other’s mathematical methods of solving problems.
- Science: Students will understand and apply major concepts of life and physical sciences and the principles of the scientific method. Students will apply their understanding of scientific concepts to make informed decisions on issues (social, environmental, political, etc.) affecting their community.
- History/Social Studies: Students will apply multiple perspectives while demonstrating understanding of civic, cultural, historical, and geographical concepts. Students will apply this understanding to act as informed participants in today’s world of diverse cultures.
- PE/Health: Students will demonstrate knowledge in various forms of exercise and recreation to help develop life-long fitness habits, which will enable participation in, and an understanding of sports. Students will understand the connection between heart, mind, and body.
Like any other public school, we as a charter school are required to teach the State’s standards for each core subject. However, because we begin with certain assumptions listed at the beginning of this section, how we organize to teach the Standards is unique to our program. Since our purpose and goals include not just the attainment of the State standards, we organize the teaching of the standards using the following which we value and believe to be effective teaching: [in parenthesis are the assumptions we make or the goals we seek]
- Curriculum integration of social studies and science, and social studies and language arts, where possible [connections]
- Projects as authentic assessments so students apply what they have learned [creativity, problem solving, development of critical thinking]
- Arts electives to promote creativity and the sense of self through creative expression of the self [creativity, search for identity]
- The use of overarching questions to help connect standards into meaningful units [connections, developing critical thinking]
- Student engagement through opportunities to create their own questions [self-determination and choices]
- Self-reflection and metacognition for assessing their own learning [analytical thinking, self-determination]
- Working in groups [problem solving collaboratively]
- Goal setting as a way to focus learning [self-determination and choice making]
- Student-led conferences to support student ownership of their learning. [responsibility]
- Offering choices in each project assessment [self-determination and choice making]
- Opportunities for students to relate personally to the standards through meaningful connections [search for identity]
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