Elementary School
Common Curricular Goals for Kindergarten through Grade 5:
We start with the assumption that the responsibility of TBS teachers is to nurture students to become passionate, reflective, creative, discerning, inquisitive scholars, as well as healthy, ethical, compassionate people. Our goal is to educate students to become intrinsically motivated and capable of sustained, quality work; independent thought; meaningful collaboration; original expression; and effective written and oral communication in humanities, arts, and sciences. We recognize that the education our children will need for their future is very different from the education most of us received.
The areas of focus for our Elementary program are:
- Speaking and Listening
- Reading
- Writing
- Mathematics
- Science
- Cultural Studies
- Spanish Instruction
- Physical Education & Yoga
- Studio Arts
- Technology/Information Literacy
- Peace Education and Conflict Resolution
- Global Environmental Awareness (Seed To Table)
- Practical Intelligence and Life Skills
- Habits of Mind, Habits of Heart, Habits of Work, Habits of Reflection, Habits of Voice
A. Speaking and Listening
Our goal is to develop students’ appreciation and understanding of the spoken word and enrich their vocabularies through conversational language and formal public speaking opportunities. Students learn to express themselves comfortably and effectively through a range of speaking and listening opportunities that include reading aloud, sharing stories, reciting poems, interviewing each other, debates, demonstrating their knowledge through public performances of their work, performing in plays, and sharing ideas, perspectives, and feelings.
Students often work in collaborative learning groups where the emphasis is on sharing thinking, reflection, problem-solving, and effective communication of ideas with other students and adults. Students gain experience in methods of active listening, which provides them with the tools for respectful listening to and consideration of the perspectives of others. Students also learn about the story of language and how and why it developed.
B. Reading
Our goal is to cultivate a life-long love of reading, which we foster by helping our students become competent and purposeful readers. Students gain increasing reading and comprehension skills and strategies within a meaningful, balanced literacy program that deepens their understanding of the texts they read. As early readers, students are helped to find “just right” books to ensure that they read for meaning along with practicing their decoding skills.
Regardless of reading level, students are encouraged to infer, analyze, synthesize, and make predictions based on the text through the use of a variety of teaching strategies that include guided reading, independent reading, literature circles, and Reader’s Workshop. Students also gain experience in many cross-cultural genres of literature including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, lyric, journalism, biography, history, scientific, and more.
C. Writing
Our goal is to develop students’ ability to effectively communicate through written expression. Every K-5 classroom incorporates a writing process workshop (“Writers Workshop”) that encourages students to develop their writing skills and express their writer’s voice through a range of forms that includes autobiography, creative writing, and research-based writing.
Through a systematic program, students are taught strategies and skills for word attack, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Students are initially encouraged to become fluent writers by writing down their thoughts with close approximation of spelling (“invented spelling”), and are then exposed to conventional spelling (often starting with common words) and expected to become more accurate over time.
Handwriting is taught through a program called Handwriting Without Tears, in which students first practice upper and lower case letters, and move into cursive writing by third grade. Students are also instructed in keyboarding, and at the beginning of fourth grade students may use laptops and/or AlphaSmart keyboards for their writing assignments.
D. Mathematics
Our goal is to help all students enjoy and understand mathematics and gain the necessary fundamental skills and confidence to effectively reason and solve math problems with increasing complexity, while gaining an appreciation of the value and beauty of mathematics in our world.
Our focus is on helping students become active problem-solvers through developing their logical thinking and to communicate their mathematical reasoning with others. Students are exposed to a variety of hands-on math materials, including Montessori materials, to help connect the symbols of mathematics with concrete understanding.
All K-5 students work with a math program developed by TERC (www.terc.edu) called Investigations in Number, Data, and Space, which aligns with the standards set forth by the National Council of Mathematics (www.nctm.org) and is also endorsed by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The following math concepts are studied each year as part of a holistic curriculum that spirals through the grades with increasing complexity: Number Sense and Operations, Geometry, Spatial Sense and Measurement, Statistics and Probability, Patterns and Algebraic Relationships. Students also learn about the story and language of numbers.
E. Science
Our science program is designed to foster students’ appreciation of the natural world from a scientific perspective, develop their understanding of the complex inter-related structures of systems, and build the vocabulary, content, skills and tools needed to become scientifically literate.
Students have an opportunity to engage as young scientists as they observe, ask questions, develop hypotheses, make predications, collect and analyze data, set up experiments, take calculated risks, do field work, conduct research, create detailed scientific drawings and writing, and share their findings and discoveries with others. Through investigation and inquiry, students learn how to further their understanding of scientific concepts, including problem setting and solving, and common misconceptions related to causality.
Students explore a variety of scientific disciplines including biology, environmental science and ecology, botany, meteorology, chemistry, zoology, geology, and astronomy; older grades also investigate environmental sustainability (with a focus on water studies), food science, physics (circuitry, magnetism, simple machines), and Lego robotics, with additional opportunities for field-based research, trips to local science facilities, and in-depth projects.
F. Cultural Studies
Our goal is for students to gain a conceptual framework for exploring the cultural contexts of people through the ages, and their relationship to local and global senses of place, in order to build an appreciation for cultural diversity locally and around the world. In the K-3 grades, stories about the origins of the universe, solar system, life, humans, ancient civilizations and our nation serve as a provocation to children’s imaginations as they are asked to explore big questions like “What came before me?”, “What is my place in history?”, and “What are my contributions?”. Students gain an appreciation of geologic and historical time, of the needs of people, a timeline of life and of humans, and the clock of eras.
In the fourth and fifth grades, students are asked to become historians and gain skills and knowledge in conducting research, interpreting primary and secondary sources, thinking critically, and reporting on their findings. The topics chosen to cover in fourth and fifth grade come from the history of the United States of America, including the political geography of the United States, the Westward Movement of the 19th Century, and the history of the state of California.
The roles and perspectives of immigrants, minorities, and ethnic identities are considered alongside with and as alternatives to dominant historical narratives, and students are guided in studying the cultural identities of their families and their own personal histories. Students are also given opportunities to connect their learning to current events and issues.
G. Spanish Instruction
The primary goals of our Spanish curriculum are to provide skills and understandings that allow students to communicate in Spanish through speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and to develop knowledge and understanding of Latin culture both within the United States of America, and globally. Additional goals include connecting with other intellectual disciplines; developing insight into the nature of language and how the Spanish language is organized; building multi-cultural fluency and awareness; and participating in multilingual communities locally and globally.
The curriculum is conceived of in two complimentary strands of Declarative Knowledge and Procedural Skills, and the main teaching methodology relies on a combination of project-based learning and Total Physical Response and Storytelling (TPRS).
H. Physical Education and Yoga
The primary goals of our Physical Education curriculum are to nurture children’s natural love of movement and build their awareness, intention, and control of their bodies and sense of spatial awareness. Our Physical Education program develops strength, control, agility, and balance, concentrating on the six core skills of running, jumping, kicking, striking, throwing, and catching, and is taught through a variety of individual, pair, small group, and large group games and activities.
Our Yoga program is based on a holistic view of yoga as a life practice, and gives students the tools to use yoga to support other works that they are doing, and/or feeling challenged on. By incorporating all aspects of yoga into life (i.e. mindfulness techniques and practices), children have opportunities to deepen their exploration into what yoga means to them, go further into understanding the idea of inquiry into yoga, and create what “their yoga” is, as the journey is different for every one of them.
I. Studio Arts
Our Studio Art program seeks to assist and guide students as they explore their creative selves through developing eight “studio habits of mind” created as part of the Teaching for Understanding framework: develop craft, engage & persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch & explore, and understand the art world.
The program is designed as a survey course that wanders through a wide variety of materials and processes that encourages students to engage with the idea of being an artist in many different ways. The course is framed by throughlines grouped around the idea of perspective, including “How does my perspective inform how I see, think, and wonder?”, “How can my perspective be strengthened or changed by new information?”, and “What value is there in looking from another perspective?”
J. Technology/Information Literacy
In the early grades, student use of technology is linked to project-based work in intellectual disciplines such as math, social studies, or science. Information literacy begins with understanding library behavior, organization, and protocols; book selection techniques; and the various parts of books.
A range of research skills, including initial citation skills, web site evaluation, differentiation between a database search, search engine query, or site-specific search, and familiarization with various electronic resources, are given more attention in fourth and fifth grade. Keyboarding may begin in the early grades on an as-needed basis, and is taught in a consistent manner starting in fourth grade.
K. Peace Education and Conflict Resolution
Building on ideas contained in the Montessori framework, our goal is to help students gain the insight and necessary skills to live peacefully with each other, and to use conflict resolution strategies when differences arise between students. Teachers set the stage by creating a culture of welcoming, trust, and openness within the classroom. At the start of the year students and teachers develop a social contract together called Classroom Rights and Responsibilities, which is co-constructed to reflect the values and expectations to live harmoniously and respectfully within TBS.
As students become more aware of how the body, mind, emotions, and spirit interrelate, they begin to develop consciousness about the interconnections of all living beings. The students also learn to accept and appreciate the needs of all people, with a focus on similarities and appreciation for the full range of differences that make everyone interesting and unique. Understanding of local and global perspectives is achieved through exploration of different cultures, cultural experiences, countries of origin, geography, celebrations of all kinds.
Our assumption is that if students are valued and given opportunities to gain self-confidence, as well as increased responsibility for planning and taking charge of projects and their work, students will develop the ability to appreciate the needs of others and the importance of cooperative interdependence. We help students develop the communication, listening, and paraphrasing skills that are necessary, along with empathetic understanding, to solve interpersonal conflicts.
L. Global Environmental Awareness (Seed To Table)
The goal of our Seed To Table program is for students (and adults) to become sensitive and respectful to the needs and rights of our natural environment and to take increasing responsibility as environmental stewards. Students also explore social justice issues connected to ecological sustainability.
Through research and community projects, service learning opportunities, organic gardening, harvesting, and cooking experiences, outdoor education opportunities, understanding of local and global land and energy use, the needs of soil, water, plants, and animals, learning about waste, and recycling and reusing, students develop the values about environmental sustainability and to take action to conserve and preserve our natural resources.
We use a systems thinking approach to understanding the delicate balance of the environment so that students develop the fundamental idea of the interconnectedness of everything and everyone. Our buildings and grounds are also used as teaching opportunities about green design, solar energy, and concern for our shared environment.
M. Practical Intelligence and Life Skills
Our goal is to develop students’ awareness about the importance of understanding different contexts, environments, personalities, and conditions, so that they can learn to apply different knowledge and strategies as each unique situation demands. Sometimes called ‘practical smarts,’ this ability is seen as very relevant for students as they face a complex world that is increasingly more difficult to interpret and understand.
To support students’ ability to deal with many different kinds of situations and people, we provide learning opportunities for students to work in groups, to apply knowledge to the real world, to develop social skills and ‘reading’ different contexts and people, and to take personal and collaborative responsibility for shaping and choosing one’s learning and social environment. In addition, students practice practical life skills throughout the day, including specific jobs in the classroom that involve planning, organizing, setting up, putting away, and cleaning.
N. Habits of Mind, Habits of Heart, Habits of Work, Habits of Reflection, Habits of Voice
Our goal is to help students develop the habits that will be critical to their future success in high school, college and in life:
- Habits of mind (thinking dispositions, curiosity and inquiry, analysis, synthesis, higher-order skills),
- Habits of heart (respectful relationships irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender or position)
- Habits of work (sustained effort, independent and collaborative work, perseverance, pride of accomplishment, knowing when and how to ask for help, intellectual risks, collaboration, organizational and study skills)
- Habits of reflection (time and space to consider impact of decisions and actions on self and others, to analyze data, to think about one’s learning, to think carefully about next steps)
- Habits of voice (constructive conflict resolution, consensus through dialogue and conversation, careful listening as well as speaking, freely voicing one’s ideas and opinions).
