The schoolyard in front of Old Main
It’s exciting to have the opportunity to build a school’s curriculum from scratch. As you may know from reading our Curriculum section of the website, we are committed to integrated learning. A variety of research shows that students find integrated, contextual learning to be most engaging and memorable. When students are engaged in meaningful work, their lives are richer; school is not something to get through, but something to live, to enjoy, and contribute to. This type of model requires a great commitment on the behalf of the educators in a school as it takes more time, planning, creativity and patience to de-compartmentalize learning. We believe this is best for our students and are therefore dedicated to work with our minds and hearts to make this a reality!
What’s great in today’s world of education, especially in Minnesota, is the foundation created by educators around the state: Minnesota Academic Standards.
As we work to build a strong curriculum for CRSS, we use the state standards as the base. From there we research: surveying educators from a variety of backgrounds to find out what is working best in the schools where they work, reading up on the latest research in education, visiting other schools, and digging through the depths of our work over the years to bring the best ideas to fruition. We are taking the standards and building a framework (curriculum map, rubrics, checklists) that will allow all stakeholders in the school to see how learning will scaffold or build over the years your child/children spend at CRSS. It will also provide a useful reference for checking if students are meeting the standards outlined for their grade level. In addition, this framework will show models for how our work is integrated, providing all with a sense of how children at CRSS will engage with their world to meet the standards.
As much as possible, subject areas will integrate with one another, so the typical question “What did you do in math (or reading, or….) today?” may be harder for children to answer. Our goal is that when you ask your child about their day, they may give an answer like this: “We planned our garden!”
And if you asked them to elaborate or talked to your child’s teacher about the day, they may reply, “We determined what plants need in order to grow, what grows best in this region and why, calculated the area of our garden and determined the quantities for the supplies we need, and read the book Weslandia* to inspire our ideas about what we’d like to do with what we grow (along with other ideas about how we live in the world and make a place for ourselves). Tomorrow we’ll begin writing a guide for how to care for the plants we chose.”
With all of the integration we will still address each student’s needs in the subject areas. An integrated lesson/project, such as the garden, would have mini-lessons associated with it to build and practice the necessary math, vocabulary, research skills, etc. to bring about success. In my years of project-based learning/teaching, it has been easy to see that students engage much more enthusiastically and successfully with materials and information when it helps them to reach a particular goal (ie. planting their garden).
Through these projects and our small class sizes, we will be better able to identify and meet the needs of all learners; differentiation will be a regular part of our classroom instruction. Reading and math will have motivating contexts on a regular basis as we develop socially, emotionally, scientifically, mathematically literate citizens.
Building the curriculum is exciting work; but most exciting of all is working with your children. We look forward to meeting you all this weekend at the open house, as we begin our journey together!
Enthusiastically and sincerely,
Ginger
on behalf of the CRSS staff
*Note: The link is to the online independent bookstore Powells, but as part of our commitment to our local communities, we encourage you to purchase locally from Central Avenue Books in Faribault or Monkey See, Monkey Read in Northfield. Books not in stock in the store can always be special ordered for you!
