Curriculum

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Developmentally appropriate Education has two dimensions:

1) Age appropriateness:  Teachers prepare the learning environment and opportunities for experience based on universal and predictable stages of child development.

2) Individual appropriateness:  Both the curriculum and adult interaction with children are responsive to individual differences, respecting each child as a unique person with an individual pattern and timing of growth, as well as an individual personality, learning style, and family background.

Elements of a Comprehensive Balanced Education Program

A balanced education program ensures student achievement while maintaining developmentally appropriate practices. The education program develops specific outcomes encompassed in eight strands that are woven throughout an integrated curriculum.

The eight strands of the integrated curriculum begin at a pre-emergent stage and develop, over year,s into proficiency.  They include the following:

·         Writing (including handwriting and spelling)

·         Math

·         Reading

·         Science

·         Social Studies

·         Social Development

·         Self Expression

·         Health and Physical Development

The curriculum is founded on Benchmark Standards, includes individualized and group guidance and instruction, and is responsive to unique learning styles.

The teacher through the curriculum and the environment integrates each of the eight strands by:

1.   Building a strong foundation of skills and information.  This allows students opportunities to explore and process.  Learning centers, classroom projects,  and written and oral reflections develop skills and provide the scaffolding needed to support independent and creative thinkers.

2.  Structuring and guiding students through the process of exploration, planning, designing, researching, developing and presenting.  Structured exploration provides a natural integration between all the critical brain functions and learning domains that are often missing with discrete teacher instruction.  Exploration provides opportunity for abstract skills and isolated concepts to connect to meaningful life experience.  For example, sorting buttons leads to the understanding of classification.

3.  Empowering the group through knowledge and experience to produce projects and products, mentor others and contribute to the greater learning community as active and responsible citizens.

Curriculum includes a comprehensive and ongoing diagnosis and assessment of individual growth and success of each student through the following:

·     Social/Emotional Development including decision-making, identifying and solving problems, making responsible choices, sharing, cooperation with partners and groups, building relationships, respect for self and others, self-control, time management, sharing adult time and attention, self-expression, acceptance of others and change, persistence at difficult tasks, knowledge of ones emotions and management of those emotions through verbal conflict resolution and democratic solution.

·     Physical Development and Motor Skills include opportunities for fine and gross motor skills such as writing, drawing, cutting, movement, balancing, etc. and printthe development of visual-motor discrimination, auditory discrimination, and visual discrimination skills.  Children need continuous and varied opportunities to experience movement connected to thinking, showing and creating.

·     Cognitive Development includes concept and language development as well as specific domains such as writing, literacy, numbers, math, science, social studies, and health.  A few components of cognitive development are  guessing, predicting, estimating, collecting data, measuring, manipulating materials through a variety of mediums, preparing and planning, creating, researching and developing theories, recording and presenting ideas, and self-expression through writing, drawing and performing.  The scope and sequence of the components and the integration of these components into curriculum is too great to list here.

·     Conferences between the family and the teachers are held formally once a year to share observations and evaluate progress in the learning continuum of each student and teacher.  Less formal communication is welcome regularly and is a vital component of the learning process.  The family connection to the school is highly valued and honored.

 Modern teaching philosophy emphasizes process focused learning.  When process focused learning is the primary goal, children are learning to learn.

Play

Play is a child's work.  The following definition explains how play embeds itself into the curriculum.

Play is the child's response to life.  It is the way a child discovers "self".  Play is the work of childhood.  Play provides a natural integration between all the critical brain functions and learning domains that are often missing with discrete teacher instruction.  Play provides opportunity for abstract skills and isolated concepts to connect to meaningful experiences.  There are many types of play:

 ·    Motor/Physical Play

Motor play provides critical opportunities to develop both gross and fine motor strength and overall integration of muscles, nerves, and brain function.  Research has confirmed the critical link between stimulating activity and brain development.

·     Social Play

Opportunities for children to engage in social play are the best mechanisms for progressing through different social stages.  By interacting with others in play settings, children learn social rules such as reciprocity, cooperation, and sharing.  Through a range of interactions with children at different social stages, children also learn to use moral reasoning to develop a mature sense of values.

·     Constructive Play

Constructive play gives children the opportunity to manipulate their environment to create.  Constructive play allows children to experiment with objects and discover properties and qualities of those objects.  It also gives children a sense of accomplishment and empowers them with control of their environment.  Children who are comfortable manipulating objects and materials also become successful at manipulating words, ideas, and concepts.

·     Fantasy Play

Through fantasy play, children learn to abstract, to try out new roles and possible situations, and to experiment with language and emotions.  In addition, children develop flexible thinking, learn to create beyond the here and now, stretch their imagination, use new words and word combinations in a risk-free environment, and use numbers and words to express ideas, concepts, dreams, and histories.  In an ever-more technological society, lots of practice with all forms of abstraction - time, place, amount, symbols, words, and ideas - is essential.

·     Games With Rules

Developmentally, most children progress from an egocentric view of the world to an understanding of the importance of social contracts and rules.  Part of this development occurs as they learn that games like follow the leader, Simon Says, soccer and board games cannot function without everyone adhering to the same set of rules.  This "game with rules" concept teaches children a critically important concept - the game of life has rules (laws) that we must follow to function cooperatively and productively.

·     The Teacher

The teacher has a variety of critical roles in supporting children's play.  These roles include an extensive knowledge of the learning process and the components of the curriculum as they relate to learning.  Teachers must continually structure the environment to provide elements of wonder, meaningful materials and meaningful opportunities that encourage high quality play in a safe and risk free environment.