Curriculum
In the elementary school grades, children bring a passion for learning to school. The Advent School’s challenging academic program, a motivated peer group, and the thoughtful support of our teachers inspires students to push their thinking further.
At Advent students are immersed in a strong, integrated curriculum. We teach them to expect connections within their learning and to freely cross the boundaries between disciplines. Within the context of a year-long theme, children learn from direct experience as they actively integrate scientific, cultural, and literary studies. They discuss, write about, and represent these topic areas using a variety of different mediums. Each student at Advent is an active participant in the learning process, making choices and accepting responsibility for his or her learning.
Students learn to research topics starting in their early elementary years. With two teachers per classroom along with specialist teachers, students have the support they need to fully understand a concept and apply skills.
Thematic approach
The Advent School is committed to thematic teaching. Based upon the premise that children deepen their understanding when they make connections between one learning experience and the next, our curriculum grows out of themes that directly connect to the School’s Mission. The theme serves as a vehicle that synthesizes and consolidates children’s learning in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography, and the Arts.
Water: Advent’s School-wide Theme for 2009-10
As part of our on-going commitment to environmental sustainability, The Advent School will be making waves throughout the 2009-2010 academic-year with the school-wide theme of Water. The World Health Organization states: “Water scarcity affects one in three people on every continent of the globe. Water is an essential resource for good health and a good life. Globally, the problem is getting worse are cities and populations grow and the need for water increases in agriculture, industry, and households.”
Checkout the Fourth Grade’s Interactive Water Website.
Class Themes
Early Childhood Center
Awareness, Compassion, and Collaboration: Learning to be Stewards of our Planet
Areas of study emerge from children’s interests and investigations. Students research their ideas, collaborating and representing their understanding through 2 and 3-dimensional art forms.
Kindergarten
Discovering how Communities Grow: Living Inclusive and Sustainable Lives
Kindergarten studies frequently stem from children’s interests in nature and humankind. Studying living things and diverse communities, including Native American cultural groups, they learn that all communities can be inclusive, equitable, and sustainable.
First Grade
Interdependence: Understanding Vital Relationships among Living Things on Earth
The Amazon River Basin provides the context for learning about biodiversity and the interdependence of all life forms. Children discover the importance of understanding, protecting, and restoring the integrity of Earth’s ecological systems.
Second Grade
Foundations for Living on our Planet: Cultivating Local and Global Perspectives
Second Graders investigate the Charles River as a starting point for their study of global interdependence. From an international perspective, China’s geography and rapidly changing natural world provide the context for their study of life in modern day China.
Third Grade
Concepts of Independence and Freedom: Studies of Historic America and its Leaders
Third Graders learn the value of independence and democracy within historical and present day contexts. The American Revolution and the Underground Railroad are the focal points of their integrated studies. All students research and write about an individual whose life has been “well-lived,” to culminate their investigation into American history.
Fourth Grade
Learning from Early Civilizations: The Challenge of Sustainability in Past and Present Worlds
Fourth Graders learn to recognize the common elements that define a civilization and to identify criteria that make civilizations sustainable over time. Students focus on Egypt and conduct independent research on diverse civilizations in Central and South America, the Middle and Near East.
Fifth Grade
Promoting Human Dignity, Economic Justice, and Peaceful Solutions in our World
Content studies include immigration to the United States, the Industrial Revolution, and child labor in today’s world, with a focus on India’s changing society. Students travel to NYC to visit Ellis Island and the Tenement House Museum and to Lowell to the Tsongas National Industrial Center to learn first hand.
Sixth Grade
Envisioning Empowerment: Human Rights, Social Justice, and Sustainability in our Global World
Life in the Middle Ages creates a context for studies that include the promise of environmental sustainability and civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa. Graduates recognize the dichotomy between a fixed society in medieval times and value our present day commitment to human rights and civil liberties. The class spends three days at the Farm School and culminates the year at the Chewonki Foundation in Maine – two outdoor classroom experiences that deepen children’s understanding of the importance of preserving our environment.
“What is absolutely unique [about the Advent School] is the judgment, creativity, and developmental attention with which its rich multi-cultural program has been constructed. If any school will underscore and illuminate the opportunity and challenge with which multi-cultural education can be considered, this fine, small, humane scholarly little school can do it for us all.”
— citation from the U.S. Department of Education
- Advent Art Sampler
