SU0004463 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Use of Time A better school calendar provides 15% more learning time for students. • Longer school day. Students learn more when they are given more time to learn each day. With more time, teachers can create more effective projects to build higher order thinking skills. Aspire schools have, on average, a seven-and-a-half hour school day for grades 1-5, and five-hour school day for kindergarten. In other words, Aspire students receive about one hour more instruction each day than students in traditional public schools. • Longer schoolyear. Aspire schools provide 190 days of instruction, ten days more than traditional public schools. Some of these additional days are on Saturday,and parents are asked to attend class with their children. Curriculum Aspire has adopted the following curriculum packages that provide both basic skills and higher-order thinking skills, are research-based, and have been proven effective in schools. [See Appendix for details on curriculum by subject area] • Early Literacy Learning Initiative (ELLI):This collaborative project between individual schools and Ohio State University, helps K-2 students develop basic literary skills. It includes both phonics and contextual reading to develop reading ability.??? • Six Traits of Writing. This writing curriculum from the North West Regional Laboratory emphasizes: ideas, organization, voice,word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. At Aspire, it is used primarily in Grades 3-8 • Univerrity of Chicago School Mathematics Project:•This curriculum covers mathematical content far beyond the computation skills currently emphasize in traditional math curriculum. It is based on research in the math curriculum of other countries. • Selected inter-disciplinary units from the San Carlos Charter Learning Center. This thematic units integrate science and social studies content. The science portion of the units requires investigation using the scientific method (generating hypotheses and designing experiments to test the hypotheses), and application of the scientific method to the students' everyday lives. The social science content ensures that students are historically literate (including culture, geography,politics, economics, and ethics) and become active, informed citizens (including U.S. policy and effective research techniques). The content is aligned with the California State Standards. Other subjects are woven throughout the curriculum. • Visual and Performing Arts: Appreciation and participation in the arts are essential to each student's development. To inspire students, to help ideas come to life by using multiple intelligences, and to ensure cultural literary, the arts are integrated into each class's thematic units. • Life Skills: To be successful in the real world, students need to be able to work effectively together, listen to each other,to make good decisions and to lead respectfully. Aspire incorporates these "life skills" throughout the curriculum, though classroom and school-wide behavioral norms [See Appendix for Code of Safety and Civility], teacher modelling, and situation-specific guidance in learning how to cooperate and collaborate. • Physical Education: Each student also receives at least 120 minutes of instruction in physical education per week.