|
Academic Learning and Reasoning Processes
Student learning is integrated around critical thinking themes: Perception, Elaboration, Problem Solving, Creative Thinking, and Collaborative Inquiry. Students leverage critical thinking and collaboration skills along with understandings from the disciplines to pursue questions about their world and to increase their capacity to generate knowledge, relationships, and actions that influence positive change in their communities. Problems, conclusions, and decisions are evaluated and challenged through the use of five reflective questions:
1. What possible points of view are there? (Perspective)
H 2. How do we know? (Evidence)
3. What difference does it make? (Relevance)
4. Does this relate to something else? (Connections)
5. What if assumptions were changed? (Supposition)
Our Community
Students learn through participatory, proactive, and collaborative experiences in which knowledge is constructed by the students. The school environment builds inclusion for all members and celebrates community learning. The school community encompasses students, teachers, and parents working together to promote learning in a caring culture. Students develop confidence in their abilities in a supportive and interactive environment.
The Arts
Students develop skill with arts technique and media. They use those skills to create, interpret and represent ideas encountered throughout the curriculum. Different forms of representation expand students’ ability to think critically. Expressing learning through the arts deepens students’ knowledge, as they must examine ideas from many perspectives to make effective and meaningful statements. The arts play a critical role in students’ reflection and in the demonstration of their learning.
Integration
Students need to understand the connections and relevance of what they are studying to be successful and engaged. Lake Washington School District curriculum materials are used to show students natural connections between disciplines; i.e., data gathering in science and analyzing the data results require mathematical applications to accurately represent data trends. Students communicate their findings from investigations through writing, multi-media presentations, models, and performance.
Our Environment
The following are leveraged to support the learning, achievement and
agency of all learners:
Critical thinking
Artistic development
Community building
Public alliance and
contribution
Students develop in an environment of
artistry, rigor and warmth; learn to think and act using multiple
approaches and perspectives; are known and nurtured as important
individuals who have an active concern for their community and society.
“When you try to pick something out by itself, you find it hitched to everything else." John Muir