Curriculum Types

A-Beka Curriculum

What is the A Beka curriculum?
The A-Beka curriculum is a comprehensive and phonetics-based learning program.
  • Arithmetic, grammar and spelling are all rule-governed activities. Students use manipulative materials and problem solving techniques that give real meaning to mathematics.
  • History is taught as a record of God’s plan for mankind. The goal is for students to gain an understanding of God’s work in our history.
  • The social studies program leads students to be historically informed, globally aware, and responsively active citizens.
  • The science curriculum presents the universe as the direct creation of God. It presents God as the great designer, sustainer, and lawgiver, without whom the evident design and laws of nature would be inexplicable. Children are also encouraged to develop a sense of the processes inherent in scientific study.
  • Reading is given a great deal of importance in this curriculum. Children learn to read through a systematic phonics program. The phonics program is employed as the most logical and orderly way to teach children to read English, which is an alphabetical language. The material in the reading texts has been carefully selected to extol the principles laid out in the word of God.

High Reach Learning Curriculum

What is the High Reach Learning Curriculum?

The High Reach Learning Curriculum is designed to promote a “creative, integrated, hands-on learning experience for the whole child.” The materials are thematic in nature and provide an array of developmentally appropriate activities that incorporate a balance between teacher-facilitated instruction and child-initiated activities. The overall objectives of the High Reach curriculums are:
  1. To provide opportunities for enhanced instructional activities for teachers by providing customized lesson plans.
  2. To develop teacher-to-teacher, day-to-day, and year-to-year consistency for continuous quality improvement in instructional activities and student achievement options.
  3. To develop quality curricular and instructional strategies that promote intrinsic creativity as well as enhance resourceful teaching and learning experiences.
  4. To provide a balanced educational program that addresses the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual needs of every child.

High Scope Learning Curriculum

What is the High Scope Learning Curriculum?

The goal of High/Scope’s reading curriculum? Children who love to read!
PreK Pre-reading Oral Language
Talking with others about personally meaningful experiences
  1. Building vocabulary: describing objects, events and relations
  2. Pretending, telling stories and resolving conflicts
  3. Having fun with language
  4. Enjoying stories, rhymes and songs
  5. Building a rhyme and alliteration repertoire
Phonological Awareness
Speaking and listening
  1. Attending to and experimenting with sounds that make up words
  2. Generating rhymes and alliterations
  3. Phonemic awareness—Distinguishing letter sounds
Print Awareness
Working with print-bearing materials
  1. Handling and learning about books
  2. Being read aloud to from books
  3. Generating print
  4. Dictating stories
  5. Reading signs and symbols, storybooks, one’s own writing
Alphabet Knowledge
Seeing and handling letters
  1. Recognizing letters and words
  2. Writing in various ways
  3. Using three-dimensional letters, keyboards and moveable type
  4. Making sound-letter connections, K-3 Reading
Phonemic Awareness
Identifying and creating rhymes
  1. Finding words with the same beginning, middle and ending sounds
  2. Separating and blending syllables and phonemes
Phonics
Sounding out regularly spelled, unfamiliar words in text and when writing
  1. Making sound-letter correspondences
  2. Working with blends, vowel combinations and silent e’s
  3. Seeing letter patterns in multi-syllable words
  4. Identifying suffixes, prefixes and root words
Fluency
Reading rapidly and accurately
  1. Recognizing words automatically
  2. Reading orally with inflection, phrasing, and attention to punctuation
Vocabulary
Identifying and reading high-frequency, non-phonetic words
  1. Sorting and matching words
  2. Reading a variety of texts
  3. Making plans, carrying them out, talking and writing about them
Text Comprehension
Listening
  1. Predicting, asking and answering questions, retelling
  2. Relating text to experience
  3. Reading alone, in pairs and in guided small groups
  4. Analyzing narrative texts for character, setting, problems and resolutions
  5. Comparing text
  6. Writing
  7. Generating text: stories, poems, journals, reports and books
  8. Drafting, rewriting, editing, proofreading, publishing and reviewing

Montessori Learning Curriculum

What is the Montessori Learning Curriculum?
The Montessori curriculum has four main areas:
 
Language – Language is taught with phonics, and the letters aren’t done in alphabetical order. Letters that look or sound alike shouldn’t be taught together so as not to confuse the child, according to Dr. Montessori. Children also handle letters made of sandpaper so that their little hands can feel the letter shape.
Math – Lessons allow children to see numbers and math concepts. Blocks of golden beads of one, ten, one hundred, and one thousand allow children to see and feel quantities. Fractions, odds and evens, and the number zero are taught with beads, rods and number games.
Sensorial – Through their senses children learn to think and reason using shapes, color and size. Geometric forms, fabric, and bells are some of the components of lessons in the sensorial curriculum.
Practical Life – These activities develop small motor skills, increase attention span, and promote independence and self-confidence. Children core apples, cut celery, wash tables, and polish mirrors. They weave, sew, sort, and even pack a suitcase. They learn how to shake hands, enter into a conversation and close a door quietly.
Another component of Montessori is the unique role of teachers. Teachers are facilitators. They design, direct and demonstrate for the child. They show the child a lesson and leave the lesson for the child to master on his own — when he’s ready.
 
Because of the facilitator role teachers’ play, some parents are skeptical about Montessori. When looking into a Montessori classroom it may appear unstructured with no teacher guidance. But the structure is there and is focused on guiding the students into self-discovery and achievement — two skills that will last them a lifetime.

Creative Curriculum

What is the Creative Curriculum?
The Creative Curriculum® focuses on interest areas.

This is done for two specific reasons:
  • First, young children work best in small groups. It is easier for them to relate positively to only one or two other children than to a large group. By dividing your space into smaller areas, you can limit the number of children who can play together in any one area.
  • Second reason for focusing on interest areas is to offer children clear choices. Sometimes children want to work quietly alone or with one other child. An area set aside for books, art activities, or table toys allows several choices for quiet activities. Areas set aside for dramatic play, block building, woodworking, or large muscle activities offer children more active choices.
 
The Creative Curriculum describes ten interest areas:
  • Blocks  
  • Library   
  • House Corner
  • Music and Movement    
  • Table Toys
  • Cooking
  • Art 
  • Computers 
  • Sand and Water
  • Outdoors

Waldorf Curriculum

What is the Waldorf Curriculum?
Holistic in nature, Waldorf education embodies a hands, heart and head approach by presenting traditional academic subjects in a context that nurtures the child’s emotional well-being and honors individuality. Founded by Austrian educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1919, Waldorf education is one of the fastest-growing private, non-sectarian school movements in the world.
 
Waldorf education is dedicated to drawing out each child’s unique abilities. Steeped in art, music, science and language arts, the Waldorf curriculum meets the child’s needs at each developmental stage with appropriate activities. The Waldorf school environment preserves the wonder of childhood and fosters independent, creative thinking and problem solving. Waldorf teachers typically hold academic degrees and have completed training programs at one of the specialized Waldorf training institutes.
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