 Communication Arts
The Pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade reading program, Imagine It!, is a true research-based program designed using thoroughly researched instructional reading strategies. The research base used to develop Imagine It! spans more than 45 years, significantly longer than most other reading programs, and its development included feedback, advice, and best practices of 45 years worth of classroom teachers This teacher experience, coupled with the most up-to-date educational and reading research, has resulted in a program that's highly effective. The program uses ePresentation instructional tools for whole group lessons presented online, and it integrates eInquiry for each unit for grades 1-5, a series of activities and materials to support inquiry. eInquiry includes a theme-related introduction, a journal that can be down-loaded and used throughout the unit, unit specific research activities, suggestions for final presentations, and opportunities for student reflection.
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Mathematics
 Fayetteville Academy uses the Everyday Mathematics program for Pre-Kindergarten through fifth grade, a research-based curriculum developed by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. A research-based program means that the instruction reflects the most current pedagogical elements identified through scientific research. You can visit their website at http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/ for additional details regarding the program. The program's newest website for parents is http://www.wrightgroup.com/parent_connection/index.html. Here you will find the philosophy of the program, success stories, and information regarding The University of Chicago School Mathematics Project. The site also includes tips for parents, the program content by grade level, anytime Do-At-Home activities relating to Everyday Math units, and literature lists.The program design is consistent with the goals and objectives of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics:
- Learn to value mathematics
Students should have numerous, varied learning experiences that illuminate the cultural, historical, and scientific evolution of mathematics. These experiences should be designed to evoke students' appreciation of mathematics' role in the development of contemporary society and to promote their understanding of relationships among the fields of mathematics and the disciplines it serves: the humanities and the physical, social, and life sciences.
- Learn to reason mathematically
Skill in making conjectures, gathering evidence, and building an argument to support a theory are fundamental to doing mathematics. Therefore, sound reasoning should be valued as much as students' ability to find correct answers.
- Learn to communicate mathematically
To express and expand their understanding of mathematical ideas, students need to learn the symbols and terms of mathematics. This goal is best accomplished in the context of problem solving that involves students in reading, writing, and talking in the language of mathematics. As students strive to communicate their ideas, they will learn to clarify, refine and consolidate their thinking.
- Become confident of their mathematical abilities
Study that relates to everyday life and builds students' sense of self-reliance will lead them to trust their thinking skills and apply their growing mathematical power. School mathematics should prompt students to realize that doing mathematics is a common, familiar human activity.
- Become mathematical problem solvers
Problem solving is the process through which students discover and apply the power and utility of mathematics. Skill in problem solving is essential to productive citizenship.
These goals provide significant implications for curriculum development and program delivery. A developmentally appropriate curriculum encourages the exploration of a wide variety of mathematical ideas in such as way that children retain their enjoyment of, and curiosity about, mathematics. It incorporates real-world experiences and children's language in developing ideas. Programs that provide limited developmental work, that emphasize symbol manipulation and computational rules, and that rely heavily on paper and pencil worksheets do not fit the natural learning patterns of children and do not contribute to important aspects of children's mathematical development. The success with which programs at later grade levels achieve their goals depends largely on the quality of the foundation that is established during the first five years of school. Qualitative considerations have far greater significance than do quantitative considerations for elementary math programs. Thus, how well children come to understand mathematical ideas is far more important than how many skills they acquire. Affective dimensions of learning play a significant role in, and must influence, curriculum and instruction. Beliefs become more resistant to change as children grow older. These beliefs influence not only their thinking and performance during this time, but also their attitudes and decisions about studying mathematics in later years.
A conceptual approach enables children to acquire clear and stable concepts by constructing meanings in the context of physical situations and allows mathematical abstractions to emerge from empirical experience. Much like we use the language experience approach in the teaching of reading and writing, the mathematical experience approach to the teaching of math is recommended. The K-5 curriculum should actively involve children in doing mathematics. Children are active individuals who construct, modify, and integrate ideas by interacting with the physical world, with materials, and with other children. Given these facts, it is clear that the learning of mathematics must be an active process. Verbs such as ascribe, explore, justify, represent, solve, construct, discuss, use, investigate, develop, and predict are used to convey this active physical and mental involvement of children in learning the content of the math curriculum. Hence, K-5 classrooms need to be equipped with a wide variety of physical materials and supplies. For example, counters; interlocking cubes; connecting links; base ten, attribute, and pattern blocks; tiles; geometric models; rulers; spinners; colored rods; geoboards; balances; fraction pieces; and graph, grid, and dot paper. Simple household objects such as buttons, dried beans, shells, egg cartons, and milk cartons, also are used.
The curriculum should emphasize the development of children's mathematical thinking and reasoning abilities. The primary goal of the study of mathematics is the ability to think, reason, and solve problems. Developing these characteristics in children requires that schools build appropriate reasoning and problem solving experiences into the curriculum from the onset. Further, this goal needs to influence the way mathematics is taught and the way students encounter and apply mathematics throughout their education.
The program should emphasize the application of mathematics. If children are to view mathematics as a practical, useful subject, they must understand that it can be applied to a wide variety of real world problems and phenomena. Even though most mathematical ideas in the K-5 curriculum arise from the everyday world, they must be regularly applied to real world situations. Learning mathematics has a purpose. At the K-5 grade levels, one major purpose is helping children understand and interpret their world and solve problems that occur in it.
The K-5 mathematics curriculum must include a broad range of content. To be mathematically literate, students must know more than arithmetic. They must possess knowledge of such important branches of mathematics as measurement, geometry, statistics, probability, and algebra.
Finally, the K-5 mathematics program should make appropriate and ongoing use of technology and calculators. Technology must be accepted as a valuable tool for learning mathematics. Computers and calculators do not replace the need to learn basic facts, to compute mentally, or to do reasonable paper and pencil computation; they are, however, necessary tools of mathematicians today and in the future.
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Science
 The lower school features a unique elementary science program. Beginning in pre-kindergarten, children receive specialized science instruction from two lower school science instructors in our two lower school science labs. Children benefit from hands-on experiential based science instruction.
Accepting the premise that a major goal of education is the development of thinking and reasoning skills, science is an ideal discipline through which much progress can be made toward attainment of this goal. The nature of science enables the student to discover through active participation relationships between mankind and the world in which we live. Another way of stating it is simply, "Experience is the best teacher." Concepts learned through personal experience tend to be better learned than those acquired through strictly didactic methods. More important than the content of the elementary science curriculum is the process through which children explore the world, a process which lends itself quite suitable to other disciplines as well.
Throughout the science curriculum we attempt to make science an enjoyable subject by tapping the natural interest and curiosity of the child. Particularly in science, there can and should be major reliance on "hands on" learning, involving children in manipulative activities that focus on experimental inquiry. This methodology is in keeping with our beliefs pertaining to the developmental needs of children, and it is consistent with the teaching mode of the other academic disciplines.
For grades 1-5, we us the Houghtin-Mifflin elementary science program. The program was selected largely due to its age appropriate content in tandem with its alignment with the parameters stated above. For pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, Primary I, and first grade, a teacher-generated unit approach is employed in lieu of a commercially produced program. Throughout each level of the science program, key terms or concepts are reiterated. In essence, children are charged with finding answers to questions. This inquiry method involves regular application of thinking skills such as comparing and contrasting, classifying, identifying, sequencing, inferring, hypothesizing, and generalizing. The acquisition of these skills along with opportunities to apply them in new situations helps children become independent thinkers and learners.
Content of the elementary science program spans the world of science in include life science, earth science, and physical science. In addition to the thinking and reasoning skills acquired through the science program, children receive instruction in areas of science that set the stage for more intensive study in the future as the progress through higher grade levels. Again focusing on what we know about how we learn, the scientific knowledge acquired during the elementary years bolsters the young science student for even greater success upon entering the more rigorous curricula of the middle and upper school years.
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Social Studies
 Pre-kindergarten through first grade teachers create individual Social Studies units of instruction designed to meet the needs of our children. Beginning with second grade, the Lower School uses the MacMillan/McGraw-Hill Social Studies program. The content covers all major social studies disciplines: geography, history, economics, government, and citizenship. In addition, the program includes a map skills program to help ensure appropriate instructional attention to geography. Thinking skills are taught systematically at each level. Lower grade levels begin with units focused on the smaller, more intimate world of the young child. For example, the spiral begins with a study of families, and moves to the school community and then to the local community. From here, the program continues to expand the breadth or perimeter of Social Studies topics until eventually, at the fifth grade level, students are learning Social Studies of America. This expansive, spiraling nature of the elementary Social Studies curriculum is consistent with the Academy's priorities of developmentally appropriate practices and with our understandings of how children grow intellectually and how they learn most effectively.
A common strand found throughout the Lower School social studies program involves thinking skills activities and opportunities. Rather than simply presenting dates, names, and places to be memorized, children are provided with assignments that require them to call upon their reasoning abilities as they attempt to solve social problems and dilemmas. Responsible citizenship is a primary focus throughout the primary and elementary levels of Social Studies instruction. The program includes routine teachings relevant to individuals taking an active role in society rather than simply sitting on the sidelines. We attempt to demonstrate to children that individual citizens do indeed have the ability to shape their society through the political process. As is the case for all other major disciplines taught in the lower school, students are engaged in active learning processes, as opposed to traditional teaching/learning models that depict the teacher as the sole source of knowledge to be imparted upon the student. Lower School students gain experience in researching and assimilating knowledge through individual and group endeavors, thereby developing the skills of the independent learner, skills that will be invaluable throughout their formal educational careers and thereafter (i.e., the "lifelong learner").
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Pre-Kindergarten
 The four-year-old program is play oriented. Toys and activities are provided to help children learn through play. Each day the children follow routines which help them learn self-help skills, how to follow simple directions and how to get along with other children. The toys and activities are grouped into areas of the classroom designated as centers, including art, language, blocks, manipulatives, housekeeping/dramatic play, sand and water, science and nature, and music.
The ART CENTER provides opportunities for social, emotional, and intellectual development; emotional and artistic self-expression; exploration through a variety of materials, textures, and colors; encouragement of originality; developing a sense of personal accomplishment; development of fine motor skills; self-discovery of color, design, and form relationships; and sharing (time, space, and materials).
The LANGUAGE CENTER provides opportunities for intellectual, emotional, and social development; development of an appreciation of books; development of visual and listening skills related to reading; imaginative thought evoked by pictures; a restful activity; and vocabulary development.
The MANIPULATIVE CENTER provides opportunities for physical and intellectual development; choices that support learning concepts; identifying various shapes and forms and their relationships to a whole; using visual memory; developing small muscle control; practicing problem-solving skills; practice of eye-hand coordination; and individual and group play in social settings.
The HOUSEKEEPING/DRAMATIC PLAY center provides opportunities for social, emotional, and intellectual development; experimenting with familiar adult roles; developing understanding of roles of family members and community helpers; learning to cope with stress by providing opportunities to recreate actual life events; communicating ideas with words; using the imagination through play interacting with other children; and sharing through play.
The SAND AND WATER ACTIVITIES center provides opportunities for emotional, intellectual, and social development; developing manipulative and sensory skills; discovery; counting, matching, and sorting; other mathematical concepts and language development (size, shape, full, empty, etc.); social interaction; dramatic play; and promoting feelings of well-being and relaxation.
The SCIENCE AND NATURE center provides opportunities for intellectual and emotional growth; first-hand experiences with nature materials, small living creatures, and inanimate objects; using the senses, questioning, problem solving, sorting, ordering, and discovering relationships; and sharing and play.
Finally, the MUSIC AND RHYTHM center provides opportunities for physical, intellectual and emotional development; developing appreciation for all types of music; self-expression; developing listening skills; positive expression of feelings; developing an awareness of and response to rhythm; and developing space awareness through movement.
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