Curriculum Overview

Seven Hills Charter Public School offers a challenging, innovative, flexible, and engaging curriculum which provides all students with an educational experience that helps them achieve the knowledge, skills, and character necessary to prepare for college, career and beyond.  We select our curriculum based on its ability to accurately reflect and appeal to our diverse population and to ensure that programs are respectful of differences in race, color, sex, religion, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation.  We are proud of the way our school, staff and programs prepare our children for success as students, workers and citizens.

 

The SHCPS curriculum, grounded in the MA Curriculum Frameworks / Common Core Standards, was created based upon constructivist learning theory.  Using an Understanding by Design planning model, teachers embed knowledge, skill and strategy development into big understandings that allow for the development of lifelong habits of mind.  By infusing “accountable talk” and “workshop” practices across all content areas, classrooms become communities of scholars who are actively engaged in rigorous learning processes. 

 

Workshop structures that support the learning cycle include mini-lessons (direct instruction), independent or group work time (practice, with effective feedback), and sharing/reflection.  The work is designed to promote critical thinking, problem solving, and projects that represent authentic learning experiences.

 

Effective feedback is most important factor in driving continuous growth and achievement.  Teachers constantly view students through a stance of inquiry, looking for evidence of their strengths to build upon and misconceptions or struggles to address.  They use the “data” received through researching their learners (standardized internal and external assessments, performance based assessments, observation and conferencing notes, work sampling, etc.) in order to drive the three-tiered response to intervention (RTI) curriculum model. The various tiers of instruction can be flexibly delivered in a variety of groupings, across settings.

 

Because children learn and express themselves in different ways, Seven Hills works to integrate music, movement, arts and technology across all content areas. Visual and performing arts allow not only provide powerful lenses for learning, but they aid in the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills, and nurture the creativity and confidence of our scholars.  With the arts, life is rich.  Likewise, technology plays an important role at Seven Hills. Lessons are designed to take advantage of the many tools we have available, including wireless laptops, document cameras, interactive Smartboards, Kindles and more.  Students regularly access online resources and curriculum supports and participate in computer based testing and instruction.  In addition, assignments are designed to encourage students and staff to use technology to communicate with each other, prepare presentations, organize and interpret data and much more.  Having the skills to “be connected” is critical to success in the twenty first century.

 

The school’s core values serve as the thread that ties together the Seven Hills learning experience.  The values of wisdom, justice, courage, compassion, hope, respect, responsibility and integrity are explored not only in our everyday lives and worldwide current events, but they are also examined through literary analysis, historical and scientific research, and the ethics that shape our world views and experiences.