Academic Content Areas

Blue School’s curriculum is inspired by Co-Constructivist theory and the Reggio Emilia Approach.  Our content area benchmarks and scope and sequence are meaningfully drawn from the Blue School community and values, International Baccalaureate Program (http://www.ibo.org/), New York State benchmarks, CASEL (casel.org), and the Arizona Department of Education (http://www.ade.state.az.us/). These areas form the framework of the learning content that we expect children, families, and teachers to cover and uncover throughout their tenure at Blue School.

1.  Language Arts

The content area of language arts includes reading, writing, listening, language, and literature. At Blue School, it is expanded to include foreign languages; media and technological literacy; and language in all its forms. Our language arts program draws from, and builds upon, today’s best practices for literacy development. Our approach is grounded in research theories that identify literacy development as beginning at birth and continuing throughout life. Within our integrated curriculum approach, the development of reading and writing skills serves the higher purpose of expressing ideas, extracting meaning, enhancing critical thinking, and connecting with others. The children explore and experience profound and diverse areas of language arts so that their lives are enriched by literacy in all its forms.

In the information age of the 21st century, language arts is increasingly affected by technology and the media. Children at Blue School have opportunities to use these media as a means of creative exploration. This process is designed to teach children to think independently and to use their growing intellects to face the challenges of the digital age. Blue School teachers explore a balance between explicit instruction and informal, incidental learning. As a result, children acquire the ability to interpret the messages and values contained within many popular forms of media. They learn to understand the agendas behind them, and as they move through the grades, develop more sophisticated mastery of literacy.

2.  Expressive Arts

One of the original inspirations for realizing Blue School as a learning opportunity for children and adults was to squarely place the expressive arts on an even conceptual ground with the more common domains of literacy, math and other educational constructs. This domain provides children the opportunity to communicate their thoughts, ideas and feelings through the various expressive arts languages. Expressive arts encompass music, movement, visual arts, studio art, dramatic art and play. At Blue School children learn about expressive arts but, just as importantly, they use the expressive arts to learn. The program is designed to give children multiple points of entry and provide tools and techniques that can expand their abilities and ignite their passions.

This curriculum provides a rich variety of materials and media for children to explore. Teachers identify ways children learn through specific media, and they scaffold each student’s development of multiple competencies. Later in the students’ learning, as children become more analytical, they explore responses and deconstruct work as well as create it. Expressive arts specialist teachers and classroom teachers collaborate to create a holistic program where learning from one part of the students’ day supports and integrates with other areas. Expressive arts teachers contribute to the children’s portfolio, the assessment processes and are integral members of the overall learning culture at Blue School.

3.  Mathematics

Mathematical thinking is intrinsic to the patterns and rhythms of the human body to the world around us. The concepts of left/right, me/you build to give way to patterns and cycles found in life. Graphing, calendars, surveys, temperatures, quantities, and time, all become applications of mathematics to daily life situations. As children develop, abstraction is where the mathematical world as a discipline and culture unto itself emerges. Concepts at this level provide domains for children to reach understanding on an even deeper level with geometry and algebra, while learning the tools and applications that activate these ideas. Applying these mathematical domains to projects, problem-solving, and planning on an experiential level supports multiple ways of learning and embeds skill development.

At Blue School, following the developmental trajectories of the student, the scope of mathematics begins with uncovering the elemental rules and symbolic representation of concepts we see in children’s actions and work. One illustration of this is being able to write “3”, “4” or “5” and understanding what it represents. From self to object, children’s mathematical understanding is applied to the world around them,   enabling them to express not only objects and their absence, but also to represent forms and equations aligned with rules and ideas.

4.  Scientific Inquiry

Within the context of the content area of scientific inquiry, children engage their natural curiosity and are challenged to seek answers and explore the world around them. The process in this area is rooted firmly in scientific method that begins with a question, follows the path of inquiry, exploration, documentation, and reflection and ends not with an answer but with further questions. Blue School acknowledges that children need to master the process of inquiry and investigation that is key to the scientific method. Teachers and children explore, document, reflect, and record findings together as they ask questions, conduct research, make observations, and formulate and test hypotheses. They have access to new technologies and learning materials that enhance the effectiveness of experiments designed to provide insight into the mysteries of our world, how it works, and their place in it. Fundamental scientific topics with increasing complexity are introduced and developed as the children move from grade to grade, building upon the skills and knowledge they have learned.

5.  Social and Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning are key elements of our work at Blue School. Research in child development increasingly demonstrates that social and emotional development and learning strongly affect cognitive growth. When children have the skills to self-regulate and solve problems on their own, they are better prepared as learners and collaborators.

Social skills and competencies enable children to be more successful in school and in life.  Social-emotional skills are the common threads that tie our entire curriculum together.  The social negotiation, discussion, and conflict found in peer relationships help children learn to understand the thoughts, emotions, motives, and intentions of others.  As they develop and extend their ability to see or understand someone else’s point of view, they identify strategies that can be used to address difficult situations. Children scaffold each other’s social and emotional skills as they make these adjustments using negotiation, collaboration, cooperation, turn-taking, and sharing. In turn, they develop greater self-confidence, self-esteem, and the willingness to take risks. Teachers, folding in parents as appropriate, facilitate social–emotional learning processes.  The skills developed in this content area influence cognitive skills and are directly related to academic achievement and learning. Cognitive and social-emotional development are complementary, mutually supportive areas of growth and learning.

6.  Physical Awareness, Health and Play

Blue School aims to provide an environment that ignites a passion for physical activity and validates all levels of development, instilling a profound appreciation of and lifelong commitment to movement, fitness and health.  While exploring this content area, teachers and children take advantage of multiple spaces including soft spaces, large indoor spaces, playgrounds, local community spaces, and the surrounding neighborhood. The children participate in activities and games designed to support exercise that is enjoyable and develops physical skills. Teachers constantly look for creative ways to incorporate physical activity and health into all other areas of the curriculum and into emerging threads of interest so that children experience their bodies as powerful agents of exploration and expression. This creates an integrated environment that helps children flourish mentally while remaining connected to their
bodies. Children also have opportunities to explore the relationship between food and physical and mental health.  With teacher and parent collaboration, meals and snack times become perfect opportunities to expose children to healthy and satisfying eating experiences and habits.  

Play, though not the sole pedagogical strategy, is absolutely essential to balancing children’s development and their readiness for school. It encourages the use of imagination, creativity, and planning skills, and generates opportunities for intellectual development. Through play, children create a zone of proximal development between their present achievements in every area and their more competent future selves. During play, children are free to risk doing things that they are not yet confident they can do well. By practicing skills or trying out ideas within a play situation, children become better able to handle real situations.

At Blue School, we believe the opportunities for problem solving, reasoning, conversing, exploring language, using numeric skills, predicting, and observing are endless within play episodes. Our curriculum encourages complex forms of play, which research shows helps children develop language skills, empathy, and a subtle capacity to know the needs of others.                  

7.  Human Studies and Global Citizenship

This content area provides a context in which children can explore the connections between self, family, community and the world at large.  Each area of emphasis within Human Studies and Global Citizenship plays a critical role in deepening children’s understanding of how their world works. Exploration by teachers, children, and families extends into the study of how people can most successfully communicate, collaborate, and connect within the context of the community.  As with other curriculum areas, teachers look for and create opportunities for relating this content to real life. Exploring identity, relationships and the ways we interact and communicate integrates social development, empathy, and the pursuit of understanding one another throughout the daily life of the school. Children expand these opportunities by reflecting upon the characteristics and experiences, past and present, of diverse cultures and populations of the world.  As the children mature, this area of the core curriculum supports their ability to grasp increasingly abstract concepts and complex ideas about human beings and the world at large.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Working from the inquiry of the children, the teachers and children co-construct a web that fits their learning goals and curricular planning needs. The web below shows how all content areas were addressed while a Blue School Kindergarten class explored letters within a literacy unit. This web allows teachers to build and expand based on the different learning styles of the children and lenses.