LITERACY
Our curriculum is focused in the early years on building strong basic skills in reading, writing and mathematics, as well as a love of simply knowing as much about our world as possible. As the children gain independent reading and writing skills, usually in 2nd grade, we introduce the idea of inquiry, learning about a topic in depth and pursuing one’s own questions about that topic.
Because Quakers believe in the constant search for truth (an understanding that no one person knows all there is to know about any topic), we want our students to learn how to research topics on their own, devising their own questions and resources, learning how to make judgments about the value of a resource and to summarize across different sources. In this way, our students build a passion to know and can be of great service to the community by sharing what they have learned about a topic. Learning then becomes a life-long experience and a collaborative one, as each student contributes a piece of knowledge to the whole study. These inquiry projects may be self-selected, individual ones or small-group, longer-term ones as the students gain research skills.
In 2nd grade, we introduce simulations, having the students assume the role, identity and perspective of the topic of study. Whether it’s becoming zoo keepers who have to research and then design healthy habitats for zoo animals to pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower having to decide what sort of a community do they wish to create, how to survive in a foreign environment and how to build strong, mutually-respectful and beneficial relationships with the people already here, we find students become more personally engaged and passionate about their study through these simulations.
Our content curriculum (Science and Social Studies) focuses on helping the children begin to see the world as much larger than their family, neighborhood or school. We begin with the very youngest students learning about the rich diversity among us and about the natural world around us. As the children age and are better able to understand the idea of a “time before us,” we turn to who was here originally, who came and what happened, the ongoing struggle for inclusion in our democracy, as well as world geographically and life in contemporary China and Africa. By 5th grade, our students study life during the Middle Ages, and Middle School history takes them even further back in time to the beginnings of Islam and what happened historically when cultures collide.
The primary goal in Science is to have our students be real scientists: making accurate observations, asking questions, forming hypotheses, creating experiments to test them and drawing conclusions. Within any science topic study, there is a strong emphasis on learning what we can do to be better stewardship of our precious earth.
This year, thanks to a generous grant, we were able to deepen this commitment to having students be scientists by introducing The Jason Project, which allows our students to work with and learn from scientists actually working in the field.
We believe the love of learning takes root in childhood and that we are stewards of that passion to learn and know. Our students leave us as voracious readers and writers, passionate researchers, dedicated to making the world better for everyone and everything. Because we are so small, the entire staff collaborates on every curricular decision, thus ensuring that every choice is made in the best interest of every student, keeping in mind our goal of nurturing that that thirst for knowledge and commitment to the future sustainability of the world.