CPSC CHARTER: Instructional Program

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From our original charter which was applied for as "The Community School for Children." in 2001 -- our educational philosophy and how we teach reading and writing, mathematics, science and social studies.

The instructional program will be modeled after the Duke School for Children. The Duke School curriculum is developmentally appropriate, hands-on, integrated, and child-centered. Each child will have an individual education plan. These principles collectively define what happens in the classroom.

Developmentally Appropriate

"Developmentally-appropriate" (see note 8) instruction combines the following principles to create the learning environment:

  • Domains of children's development -- physical, social, emotional, and cognitive -- are closely related. Development in one domain influences and is influenced by development in other domains.
  • Development occurs in a relatively orderly sequence, with later abilities, skills and knowledge building on those already acquired.
  • Development proceeds at varying rates from child to child as well as unevenly within different areas of each child's functioning.
  • Early experiences have both cumulative and delayed effects on individual children's development; optimal periods exist for certain types of development. Times of readiness should be taken advantage of in instructional planning.
  • Development proceeds in predictable directions toward greater complexity, organization, and internalization.
  • Development and learning occur in, and are influenced by, multiple social and cultural contexts.
  • Children are active learners, drawing on direct physical and social experience as well as culturally transmitted knowledge to construct their own understandings of the world around them.
  • Development and learning result from interaction of biological maturation and the environment, which includes both the physical and the social worlds that children live in.
  • Play is an important vehicle for children's social, emotional, and cognitive development as well as a reflection of their development.
  • Development advances when children have opportunities to practice newly acquired skills, as well as when they experience a challenge just beyond the level of their present mastery.
  • Children demonstrate different modes of knowing and learning and different ways of representing what they know.
  • Children learn best in the context of a community in which they are safe and valued, their physical needs are met, and they feel psychologically secure.

Integrated

An "integrated" (see note 9) curriculum considers the integrated nature of development -- what happens in one aspect of development, such as physical development, inevitably influences development in other domains. It includes various subject matter disciplines, such as science, mathematics, and literacy, in common activities, rather than as separate branches of knowledge by providing an organizing topic or concept within the children's range of experience that allows children to explore, interpret, and engage in learning activities that draw on goals from one or more subject-matter disciplines. There is an emphasis on building from children's interests and experiences, offering a concrete context of activities to associate learning in a meaningful way and opportunities to apply skills and knowledge on meaningful problems. Integrated curriculum activities also offer a variety of related experiences that allow for individual learning styles and multiple intelligences.

Hands-On

Hands-on curriculum encourages children to experience each concept. This idea is beautifully captured in the Chinese proverb "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand."

Non-Graded

Closely related to the developmentally-appropriate principle, the non-graded, continuous progress instruction provides a framework where children are challenged appropriately, according to their ability to master intellectual, physical, emotional and social tasks at progressively more difficult levels. A non-graded instructional plan increases the educational possibilities for every child and thus makes success for each child more probable.

Child-Centered

Last, but most important, everything about The Community School for Children will be Child Centered. "Child-centered" (see note 10) means that the organization and structuring of the school is based on responding to a particular image of the child as full of life, power, and confidence, rather than full of need. At its most basic level, it refers to the rights, potential and strengths of children. They have potential, plasticity, the desire to grow, curiosity, and ability to be amazed, and the desire to relate to other people and to communicate.

Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio approach, discusses the rights of children: to be recognized as both source and constructors of their own experience, and thus active participants in the organization of their identities, abilities, and autonomy, through relations and interaction with their peers, with adults, ideas and things.

In addition to the child's right to growth, Child-centered also recognizes parent's rights to be involved in the life of the school, and teachers' rights to grow professionally, all three active protagonists coming together.

Emergent Curriculum

The curriculum that flows from these principles is called an "emergent curriculum" (see note 11). It explores what is socially relevant, intellectually engaging, and personally meaningful to children. The basic idea is that organic, whole learning evolves from the interaction of the classroom participants, both children and adults. In emergent curricula, both adults and children have initiative and make decisions. This power to impact curriculum decisions is negotiated, between what interests children and what adults know is necessary for children's education and development.

The curriculum is called emergent because it emerges, traveling along new paths as choices and connections are made, and it is always open to new possibilities that were not thought of during the initial planning process. Teachers follow children's lead, then introduce new activities to sustain their interests and deepen their explorations "a delicate balancing act that requires genuine responsiveness and attention to more than just the teacher's goals." Through this process, the curriculum keeps emerging and the teacher, together with the children, keeps learning.

The following descriptions include more details about how The Community School for Children will teach several important skills: (see note 12)

Reading and Writing

Children learn to read and write by reading and writing rather than by doing pages of abstract exercises in workbooks. Beginning readers dictate stories to teachers and learn to read back their own words. They are encouraged to attempt their own writing by spelling words the way they sound. They write or dictate signs, lists, letters, songs, stories, reports, recipes, new articles, or playscripts out of a need to communicate. They read in order to follow a recipe, to decipher a note from a friend, to gain information about a topic or interest and to enjoy good literature of many kinds.

Teaching Partners help children develop as readers and authors through the following activities: carefully organized projects that involve use of reading and writing, group writing during class meetings, smaller literature and writing discussion groups, mini-lessons in composition and writing mechanics, individual reading and writing conferences, reading and revision of writing with peers, class read-aloud discussions, and quiet reading and writing times. Children receive specific response regarding things they are doing well, and set individualized goals during conferences with their Teaching Partner and in small group discussions. Their individual strengths and goals are listed for continued reference in their personal writing notebook or writing folder.

In the context of meaningful reading and writing, children are guided to develop knowledge of letter sounds, spelling patterns, punctuation, capitalization, and other skills necessary for communicating meaning through print. Children learn about important elements of literature and apply them in their own writing. They also learn to revise and edit their writing in order to publish or display it. By the upper elementary grades, children are composing and revising detailed reports, creative stories, letters of opinion, and eloquent poems.

The Community School emphasizes the fact that print is meant to carry meaning and that we read and write to communicate real ideas. Therefore learning to read and write is always done in a context which holds meaning for the children involved.

Mathematics

The emphasis is on developing an understanding of mathematical concepts through use of manipulative materials and on problem solving in realistic situations. Math is seen as a tool with which children can sort, measure, compare, quantify, and calculate anything with which they are working.

Based on the challenging Curriculum and Evaluation Standards produced by the NCTM Commission on Standards for School Mathematics, the approach to math includes:

  1. Application - an emphasis on using math for real problem solving. Children use math as they collect and analyze data in science experiments, as they cook, as they measure and graph weather conditions, as they draw plans for wood-working to scale, as they buy and sell crafts they have made in a classroom "store," and in a multitude of other ways. Teaching Partners continually foster the uses of math inherent in children's self-chosen projects. They also create realistic projects that challenge children to apply specific math skills.
  2. Developing understanding through use of manipulative materials. Teaching Partners work toward helping children understand the underlying concepts behind a skill through use of manipulative materials (including counters, pattern blocks, base-ten blocks, rocks, leaves). Children are guided to discover mathematical rules or formulas for themselves whenever possible.
  3. Finding patterns - Teaching Partners help children learn to think mathematically by guiding them to find or create their own mathematical patterns.
  4. Estimation - Children develop understanding of what qualities mean as they learn systematic ways to estimate and then measure volumes, lengths, distances, numbers, and weights of real objects. They also learn to estimate answers to numerical calculations. Estimation helps them focus on the math concept rather than only on mechanical pencil-paper computations, and it helps them test the validity of a given answer.
  5. Reading and recording - Children become fluent at reading and recording mathematical experiences on graphs, in charts, through geometric designs, as numerical calculations and through written descriptions of mathematical activities. The recording that children do on paper represents only part of the important mathematical thought (estimating, looking for patterns, discovering properties, logical problem solving) which children are stimulated to engage in every day.
  6. Practice. After children understand the concepts involved in a math skill and know how to apply it, they still need practice. Children practice math skills whenever they are engaged in problem solving, application, estimation, pattern finding, and recording of math. For additional practice, activities focus on particular skills. This may include challenging word problems and brief pencil and paper practice of math facts or computation. However, children learn best when practice is fun and relevant, so games are often used to help children develop their mathematical abilities. In card games, dice games, board games, and various other games, children are challenged to think quickly, use math facts, use logic, and solve problems. Specific games can help children develop the concept of place value, use coordinate on a grid, learn to simplify fractions, or practice multiplication tables.

Most math activities can be approached from a variety of levels of understanding. This makes it easy for teachers to help each child extend his or her learning as far as possible in each situation. In these "open-ended" activities, children are often able to go much further in their mathematical understanding than they could if limited to a textbook.

The goal is for children to view math as an accessible, logical tool, rather than as a set of unfathomable, arbitrary rules applied to rows of number problems. This is experiential, problem-solving oriented mathematics, realistically applied in integration with other curriculum areas.

Science

At The Community School, science is considered to be the process of actively exploring and discovering the world around us. Children are continually involved in the process of doing science.
Children of all ages explore materials and conduct experiments. They observe as they raise animals, build structures, recreate ecosystems in terrariums, create electrical circuits, cook, find ways to conserve the soil on their playground, make instruments to measure weather conditions or explore properties of sand and water. As children explore, their Teaching Partners guide them in the use of science skills:

  • observing
  • classifying
  • questioning
  • predicting (forming hypotheses)
  • gathering information from may sources
  • experimenting
  • identifying and controlling variables
  • collecting and analyzing data
  • drawing conclusions and communicating them effectively
  • learning from "mistakes"

Children's understanding of a scientific concept requires direct experience. And children come to understand concepts best when they have "discovered" ideas for themselves. Therefore, Teaching Partners ask many open-ended questions which lead children to discoveries through their own experimentation, rather than merely giving them answers and formulas. Such questions might include: "How can we find out how much water is in an apple?" "What kinds of food does our guinea pig prefer to eat?" "How could you lift Susan off the floor without touching her?" Then as children "discover" things, the Teaching Partner supplies the relevant vocabulary, helping children generalize and extend their understanding through discussion related to their direct experiences.

Social Studies

Social Studies begins with and continually involves children's growing awareness of self in relation to others. It is essential that children see themselves as important, independent individuals who are related to and interdependent with other people. Experiences are geared toward helping children learn that they have many contributions to make as individuals and as members of a group. The opportunities they have to make choices, ask questions, plan their own projects, solve their own problems, and think independently help children develop their own sense of worth and their ability to be self-directed.

Children undertake many cooperative projects and have frequent interactions with peers. These situations provide opportunities to practice group problem-solving, democratic decision-making, consensus building, conflict resolution, and respect for others. Emphasis is placed on building understanding and appreciation of diverse ideas and backgrounds.

Children have a limited ability to comprehend geographical space or historical time until their early adolescence. Therefore Teaching Partners must insure that topics investigated are developmentally appropriate for each age level.

Children in early elementary grades start with direct personal experiences with time, space, and roles in society. This begins with their classroom interactions. They take walks around the neighborhood, go on field trips around the city, invite guests with varied occupations into their classrooms, act out adult roles in their dramatic play, and map out their community in the block center. Gender and ethnic stereotyping is avoided through selection of trips, visitors, books, and pictures that show a balance of roles.