Elementary

The Elementary School Curriculum (Grades 1-5)

Language Arts

All Language Arts elementary classes will incorporate the four basic skills needed to learn the English Language: reading, writing, listening and speaking. At all grade levels students will learn  the reading skills of Word Analysis, Fluency and Systematic Vocabulary Development, Reading Comprehension, Literary Response and Analysis, Writing Strategies and Applications, Written and Oral English Language Conventions, and Listening and Speaking Strategies and Applications.

Social Studies

• Students place key events and people of the historical era they are studying in a chronological sequence and within a spatial context; they interpret time lines.
• Students correctly apply terms related to time, including past, present, future, decade, century, and generation.
• Students explain how the present is connected to the past, identifying both similarities and differences between the two, and how some things change over time and some things stay the same.
• Students use map and globe skills to determine the absolute locations of places and interpret information available through a map’s or globe’s legend, scale, and symbolic representations.
• Students judge the significance of the relative location of a place (e.g. proximity to a harbor, on trade routes) and analyze how relative advantages or disadvantages can change over time.

Research, Evidence and Point of View

• Students differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
• Students pose relevant questions about events they encounter in historical documents, eyewitness accounts, oral histories, letters, diaries, artifacts, photographs, maps, artworks, and architecture.
• Students distinguish fact from fiction by comparing documentary sources on historical figures and events with fictionalized characters and events.

Historical Interpretation

• Students summarize the key events of the era they are studying and explain the historical contexts of those events.
• Students identify the human and physical characteristics of the places they are studying.

Sciences

In grades one through five students will study physical sciences, life sciences, earth sciences, and investigation and experimentation. Students will learn that scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this content in the physical, life and earth sciences, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.

Mathematics

By the end of grade one, students understand and use the concept of ones and tens in the place value number system. Students add and subtract small numbers with ease. They measure with simple units and locate objects in space. They describe and analyze and solve simple problems.

By the end of grade two, students understand place value and number relationships in addition and subtraction and they use simple concepts of multiplication. They measure quantities with appropriate units. They classify shapes and see relationships among them by paying attention to their geometric attributes. They collect and analyze data and verify the answers.

By the end of grade three, students deepen their understanding of place value and their understanding of and skill with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers. Students estimate, measure, and describe objects in space. They use patterns to help solve problems. They represent number relationships and conduct simple probability experiments.

By the end of grade four, students understand large numbers and addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers. They describe and compare simple fractions and decimals. They understand the properties of, and the relationships between, plane geometric figures. They collect, represent, and analyze data to answer questions.

By the end of grade five, students increase their facility with the four basic arithmetic operations applied to fractions, decimals, and positive and negative numbers. They know and use common measuring units to determine strength and area and know and use formulas to determine the volume of simple geometric figures. Students know the concept of angle measurement and use a protractor and compass to solve problems. They use grids, tables, graphs, and charts to record and analyze data.