Five Essential Elements of the Written Curriculum
In order to achieve balance in South Lake's curriculum, five essential elements are emphasized.
Knowledge- What do we want students to know about?
- Significant, relevant content that we wish the students to explore and know about, taking into consideration their prior experience and understanding.
Concepts- What do we want students to understand?
- Powerful ideas that have relevance within the subject areas but also transcend them and that students must explore and re-explore in order to develop a coherent, in-depth understanding.
Skills- What do we want students to be able to do?
- Those capabilities that the students need to demonstrate to succeed in a changing, challenging world, which may be disciplinary or transdisciplinary in nature.
Attitudes- What do we want students to feel, value and demonstrate?
- Dispositions that are expressions of fundamental values, beliefs and feelings about learning, the environment and people.
Action- How do we want students to act?
- Demonstrations of deeper learning in responsible behavior through responsible action; a manifestation in practice of the other essential elements.
Curriculum and the Primary Years Programme
The International Baccalaureate does not give South Lake Schools a set curriculum to teach within the Primary Years Programme. Instead, they offer teachers a framework of five elements in which to structure and organize Michigan's content standards into big ideas and conceptual learning.
It is important to organize content into big ideas because it offers our students a much broader perspective into the concepts they are studying. This allows them to remember and have a better understanding of what they are learning.
This framework is used so that a balance between essential knowledge and skills, development of conceptual understanding, demonstration of positive attitudes, and taking of responsible action is formed within the curriculum.
This framework helps South Lake Schools offer the best well rounded curriculum in order to educate each child according to his or her needs.