Learn and Explore Academy Curriculum & Benefits in 2024

Learn And Explore Academy

Our Curriculum

Foundational Classes

Explorers entering Learn And Explore Academy must begin their careers with a rock-solid foundation in the English Language Arts and Mathematics. So, throughout all the grades, Kindergarten to 5th, our number one academic priority is developing strong, lasting foundational skills. While our delivery makes it more palatable for children to learn – by way of adding meaning and context across all lessons – our commitment is first and foremost the explicit, systematic teaching of foundational skills.

English Language Arts

Our Language Arts classes develop advanced reading and writing, listening and speaking, and language skills that enable communication in increasingly diverse ways and with increasingly diverse audiences. The program presents concepts and information in a cumulative manner – meaning that explorers master a unit before moving onto the next.

This includes writing composition, fluency, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, sound mastery, vocabulary, and more. And of course, practice makes perfect, so we provide plenty of opportunities for extensive skills practice and application to build mastery. This approach naturally builds upon the student’s prior knowledge by reviewing and integrating past concepts with the learning activities.

Mathematics

Our Core Mathematics classes are no different. The underlying approach to mathematics instruction is that it should build on prior knowledge. The program is incremental, distributed, and cumulative. This means that students have time to understand and practice a small portion of the concept before proceeding to the more difficult increment.

On top of that, distributing or spacing increments across the year ensures that students have time to practice and master a concept before building on it. Cumulative practice means that student mastery is tracked and interventions and supports are provided whenever growth areas are identified.

Additional Curriculum Benefits

One of the most powerful strategies that schools can use to make learning relevant is to place academics within the context of issues and problems from the world of work. Students become inspired and develop a love of learning when they are solving exciting problems and work on projects that link their academic and technical classes to authentic real-world themes.

Physical Education

Learn And Explore Academy facilities include 2 large outdoor playgrounds and 1 indoor play space. This ensures that our school provides plenty of opportunities, and space, for our explorers to establish and sustain an active lifestyle.

Not only do regular playground activities improve attention span, memory, and learning, they can also reduce stress and the effects of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Memory retention and learning functions are all about brain cells actually changing, growing, and working better together.

Assessments

All Learn And Explore Academy students in grades 3–8 will take the State English Language Arts (ELA), Mathematics, and Science test each spring.

Formative & Summative Assessments

Learn And Explore Academy will assess all K-8 explorers in Math and Reading using a standardized testing tool that identifies explorers’ strengths and weaknesses, measures growth, and supports data-driven differentiated instruction. It provides a comprehensive insight into explorers learning across K-5 skills to help teachers meet the needs of all children.

The diagnostic will be administered three times in an academic year – one during the start of school in September, the second in January, and the third in May.