SHCPS offers students an engaging, challenging curriculum rooted in ambitious academic student standards, carefully selected core curricular materials, and a supportive UbD-based pedagogy that encourages active student learning and meaningful project-based learning. We utilize a constructivist approach to teaching and learning science that promotes the development of critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

 

At the Early Learning, Primary, and Elementary Academy levels, the science curriculum is interwoven throughout the curriculum. In addition to using literature and experience-based programming, students acquire sound knowledge of the scientific method by participating in activities found in various thematic kits developed by Science through Inquiry (STC),Delta Science Modules (DSM) and Science Through Experimentation Processes (STEP).  These programs help students learn to collect, organize and analyze data and develop research skills that can be applied throughout each unit of study.  Each unit, selected to be aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, draws from a variety of resources to integrate math and language arts skills into the scientific process. 

 

The core program for teaching science in the Junior Academy is Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.  Each level of SHCPS’s three-year Junior Academy science program contains units from life, earth, and the physical sciences. These spiral in complexity and difficulty from year to year. The program goals are to instill an appreciation of how science, technology, and society are interrelated, promote and understanding of important science concepts processes and ideas, to apply the use of higher order thinking skills, to improve problem solving abilities and skills, and to improve the ability to apply scientific principles.

 

Assessment is an interactive and on-going process between the teacher and the student, not a single event at the end of a given instructional sequence. A variety of assessment tasks and strategies that more accurately analyze the learning process of each student on a daily basis are provided in the curriculum. The process of embedded assessment allows the student and the teacher to have a more authentic measure of what the students know, value, and are able to do. For the teacher, this process helps determine the flow of the lessons. Students are encouraged to be responsible for their education, rather than accepting grades as an external consequence that is out of their control. Ongoing assessment helps students understand their progress, monitor their own growth, and develop specific skills.