Academics and Curriculum

Educational Approach
We share the goal that every parent has for their child: to learn and be successful in school and in life. The educational approach at City Neighbors focuses on teaching for thinking and understanding. Using the State Content Standards as an academic framework, we set high expectations for every child. We believe in a project based learning environment where children can learn more in the process of exploring ideas, making predictions, building models of their ideas, and testing outcomes as they apply their knowledge. In this process we encourage children to be empowered by knowledge and thinking for their own lives and for the good of the community. They also become passionate learners as we engage them in work that makes sense to them.

What is Project-based Learning?
A project is an in-depth investigation of a topic. There are three phases to project-based learning. These three phases include:

  1. the development of guiding questions through class discussion, brainstorming or exploration;
  2. the collection of data and the representation of their findings
  3. the sharing of work with families, peers and school community members

Project-based learning is often driven by student interest. Through project-based learning, students have the opportunity to learn in more real-world ways, develop skills of collaboration, discussion, and exploration, learn how to effectively explore and present information on any topic, and discover what it’s like to plunge beneath the surface of a topic of content area.

What is Arts Integration?
Arts integration is a methodology and a philosophical approach to education that creates personal connection and added depth in the classroom through a creative inquiry-based process of teaching and learning. Using the arts can assist students in understanding and applying skills. Through the connection of personal experience with the subject matter, and an emphasis on the process of discovery which allows for unexpected outcomes, teachers help students to develop more complex thinking skills.

Educational research supports arts integration. The arts reach students who are not otherwise being reached. The arts reach students in ways that they are not otherwise being reached. The arts connect students to themselves and each other. The arts transform the environment for learning. The arts provide learning opportunities for the adults in the lives of young people. The arts provide new challenges for those students already considered successful. The arts connect learning experiences to the world of real work.

Arts integration is not just teaching arts for their own sake. Arts integration is not about artist residencies, or occasional arts projects that connect to other curricular subjects. Arts integration is about nurturing the development of cognitive, social, and personal competencies of each student and enriching and supporting their learning and growth in every area of their development.

What is Reggio Emilia?
Reggio Emilia is the name given to a teaching style that has evolved in the Northern Italian municipality of Reggio Emilia. Fundamental to this educational philosophy is the perception of children as being strong, intellectually rich and possessing great potentials. In this educational model, the teacher works with children to stimulate and deepen critical thought in a research partnership. In Reggio Emilia, knowledge is seen as something that is socially constructed and should be based on ideas and experiences that are real and meaningful to the child. One aspect of Reggio Emilia in evidence at CNCS is a respect for children's creative capacities and individual learning styles.

Curriculum Overview

Reading
Teachers design the reading instruction at CNCS to offer multiple opportunities every day for students to read and discuss their reading. Generous amounts of time are dedicated to helping children grow in their abilities as readers, writers, spellers and communicators through a variety of interesting activities relevant to the children, their projects and studies, and their developmental stages. Some examples of daily reading instruction are: reading or listening to high quality children’s literature and nonfiction read aloud for enjoyment, for information or for project research; teachers working with small groups guiding their acquisition of reading skills and strategies; children expanding upon their understandings of their readings in writing, discussion, drama, and visual art individually, in pairs, and in groups; using the school library and the library areas of the classroom regularly. We have chosen to utilize the Guided Reading Program authored by G.S. Pinnell and published by Scholastic. This program uses authentic literature and children are matched with books that provide an appropriate amount of challenge. Teachers also teach literacy as the need arises while working on science, social studies and other content areas. The goals for language and literacy instruction at CNCS are for children to become independent and productive readers who enjoy reading and who recognize its relevance in their lives.

Mathematics
Everyday Mathematics, a Pre K-6 mathematics program from Wright Group/McGraw-Hill, helps students measure up to the demand for greater mathematical competence and problem-solving agility. It is one of two elementary math programs highly recommended by the U.S. Department of Education. The research-based curriculum coincides with standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and is used in 175,000 classrooms across the United States by nearly 2.8 million students. The program begins with the premise that young children can, and must, learn more mathematics than has been expected from them in the past. The instructional design is carefully crafted to capitalize on student interest and maximize student learning.

Science
Full Option Science System: FOSS modules begin with hands-on investigations, then move students toward abstract ideas related to those investigations using simulations, models and readings. FOSS provides long-term inquiries for each grade level, and the modules build upon each other toward the grand ideas of science.

Art
Inspired by the schools of Reggio Emilia, the arts are an essential component of our educational approach – not an add-on, but a connecting point to involve and challenge students in their entire academic and creative evolution. The arts permeate the CNCS community, where the halls are designed to showcase drawings, paintings, poems and constructions by students. Artistic achievement is admired, respected and honored.

Social Studies: A Project-based Thematic Approach
Each year, students at CNCS will explore three overarching themes. These themes will serve as the primary focus in social studies, but will be integrated when possible into other areas of the CNCS curriculum. Each theme lasts approximately thirteen weeks (the length of one trimester) and culminates in a school wide celebration of learning.

Links and Articles of Interest


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