Our Curriculum
At Portland Cooperative School, we are helping shape
life-long learners. Children who learn to read and write
fluently, and who are exposed consistently to a variety of
literature, learn to express their ideas with clarity and
confidence. Accordingly, literacy is at the heart of our
curriculum. Our classroom library contains more than a
thousand books and we extend our students’ exposure to
literature through regularly scheduled visits to the local
library. We see our students as readers and writers and
create conditions that support them as they learn to read
fluently and with confidence, and write with ease and
eloquence.
When we read, we climb inside the book, hearing the voice
of the story. We walk in the footsteps of our literary
characters. As we laugh with them, we laugh amongst
ourselves; as we share their sadness, we learn empathy; as
we help them solve problems, we begin to find ways to
resolve our own conflicts. Our students read independently
and in book clubs, and our teachers initiate shared reading
each day.
We bring literary characters to life within our classroom.
They appear in our plays, and our students write to them
and drag them into their first poems and their own books.
They become part of our school community.
We nurture our emerging writers by supporting them as
poets, novelists, playwrights and historians. Beginning
with what they see, wonder, draw, imagine, notice,
remember, feel and experience, our students come to
understand and actively participate in the process of
writing. We support our students by taking their writing
seriously. In our daily writers’
workshop, our students write about what is important to
them. They begin with “small moments,” writing about small
pieces of their experience in rich detail. We encourage our
students to “stretch out” words, writing the letters that
represent for them the sounds they hear when they pronounce
the words. Gradually, we introduce “dictionary” spelling,
correct grammar and punctuation. We present these
communication tools as a way to bring reader and writer
together through a common language.
Our students “publish” much of their writing in their own
books and in book reviews they write for distribution at
the local library. They take risks by choosing to share
their writing with peers during lunchtime “café readings.”
Our students’ writing reflects their own important
experiences. They write poems, recipes, stories,
biographies, letters, plays, instructions, and book
reviews.
Just as we support our young students as they begin
drawing, labeling, telling and writing, we equip our older
students with more advanced tools and strategies so they
learn to write sophisticated stories and to embed these
stories in memoir and personal essays.
Our literate environment supports our students’ skills as
not only as emerging readers and writers, but also as
mathematicians, athletes, scientists, artists and
historians. Bridges,
our
mathematics program, is helping form curious, inventive,
thoughtful mathematicians. With its hands-on approach to
creative problem-solving, Bridges
complements our
literacy program.
Through our social studies and sciences programs, our
students explore broad, generative themes through discreet,
linked units of study. For example, as we study “Our
City/Our State,” the focus moves from rain cycles to
watersheds, to the great river system that drew the Lewis
& Clark expedition westward. Our students come to
understand that the United States is a country of
immigration and westward expansion, and consider the
dramatic effects new arrivals had on Native Americans.
We build on learning in every area by revisiting subject
matter repeatedly throughout the kindergarten through
eighth grade years. In this way, our students deepen their
understanding of important timeless, relevant subject
matter. Our curriculum is taught in two-year cycles from
Kindergarten through 5th
grade; the
6-7-8 curriculum will be taught in a three-year cycle.
Through collaborative inquiry, investigation and
experimentation in reading, writing, the social and
physical sciences, mathematics and the arts, our students
become increasingly proficient in using tools of inquiry
and investigation and representing their learning clearly
in a variety of ways.
OUR THEMATIC CURRICULUM...
Portland
Cooperative School’s curriculum is generative in that it
encompasses broad themes that stimulate exploration of
essential issues in each of the dominant areas of study
(mathematics, language arts, social sciences and sciences).
For example: What does is mean to be alive? What role do I
play in my family? What does a plant need to grow? How were
traditional folk tales put into writing? In the K-1 and 2-3
we follow a two-year cycle of study, with
emphasis on the social sciences one year and the
sciences/math the other. This dichotomy is illustrated by
our curriculum descriptions. Although we emphasize one
major area each year, there is balance within that year so
that essential skills are honed in each area and our
students’ knowledge base is continually expanding through
integrated studies.
...
IS EMERGENT
While our
curriculum is thematic, we value the interests of each
child and we invite our students’ interests to emerge and
become a focus of study, so long as those interests spur
the in-depth investigation of broad themes and important
questions. For example, finding an empty motor oil
container during a stream study at a local park may lead us
to enlarge the focus of the work to include a conservation
effort or learn how litter threatens native
species.
...
IS RIGOROUS
Our program is
academically rigorous. By employing an emergent curriculum
we employ children’s interests as launching points from our
generative themes. This leads to enthusiastic, empowered
students who own their education as active partners.
Although we observe national and state standards and widely
accepted common curriculum goals, we do not “teach to”
nationalized tests. Rather than merely being inculcated
with core competencies and assembling a factual knowledge
base, PCS students are challenged to take the next steps:
integrating (applying) their skills and transferring these
to new areas; and, extrapolating, both individually and
collaboratively, from their knowledge and skill bases, to
truly engage in critical and creative discovery. Returning
to our stream study example, one child’s investigation of
the interaction of the water and the oil residue may lead
to study of the role of plants as biological filters. This
integrated knowledge may trigger broader questions about
detoxification: the child begins an in-depth investigation
of the organs and processes that detoxify the human body
(extrapolation).
