Level III

In Level III, students learn specific tools and strategies to help them grow in many areas with the goal of gaining emotional independence. After they explicitly learn about each tool they begin to practice these on daily basis with their teachers, classmates, and our community. 

Some SEL tools taught in Level III: 

• Building and navigating friendships
• Resolving conflicts and making repairs
• Friendship languages
• 6 Second Pause

Expanding on skills and concepts learned in the earlier grades, by Level III, the reading and writing domains become increasingly intertwined. Students leverage off of and enhance their skills in:

• Comprehension: Continue to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal reasoning to deepen our literal and inferential comprehension skills.
• Vocabulary: Focus on word study and morphology to apply our understanding of how roots, prefixes, and suffixes enhance our understanding of word meaning.
• Variety of genres: Read fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and practice active reading strategies to deepen comprehension across multiple genres.
• Research: Conduct non-fiction research, and write outlines and paragraph(s) to deepen our curricular knowledge.
• Sentence structure: Write simple and compound sentences across a variety of genres (narrative, non-fiction, poetry) to enhance our content knowledge and understanding/application of sentence structure.
• Paragraph structure: Create single paragraph outlines and write paragraphs with a main idea and supporting sentences to deepen our content knowledge. 

Skills practice and concept exploration are highlighted through small math groups, and integrated curricular projects. In Level III we stress the importance of mathematical visualization progressing through "build, draw, write" to create independence in math, foster creative problem-solving, and make connections between different mathematical practices, as well as cross-curricular connections.

Level III students will explore:

• Large number additions and subtraction
• Beginning combinatorics
• Calculating area and perimeter
• Exploring different base systems
• Measurement and scaling
• Geometric shapes and features
• Data and data collection
• Multiplicative thinking
• Fractions, decimals and percents

Our science curriculum integrates with social studies content each year, giving students an opportunity to explore how the world around them works, as well as the interpretations of that world in the past. Our Garden Science specialists provide a physical connection to the curriculum and opportunities for students to explore their environment and practice observations and date collection.

Topics include: 

• Geography, topography, and natural resources
• Predator & prey relationships
• Physics and simple machines
• Sustainability
• The water cycle
• Tides and the moon
• Biomes and ecosystems

In Level III Social Studies, the focus is on either American or Egyptian history depending on the US or World History year. The Social Studies curriculum is the catalyst for the integration in all of our subjects. Social Studies is also an opportunity to connect our annual Change Maker and theme to our curriculum.

Topics include:

• Identity
• Governing systems
• Geography
• Community Building
• Personal beliefs and values versus historical points of view
• Comparing historical events with the events of today

Level III students continue developing skills and artistic fluency as they are encouraged to take creative risks with their projects. Our curriculum provides opportunities to look into the world around them and use art as a tool for advocacy through:

• Principles of art and design
• Visual Storytelling
• 2D & 3D sculpting
• Collage
• Printmaking
• Observational drawing

In Level III Performing Arts, students expand on the rhythm, pitch, movement and instrument skills they developed in Level II. They improvise and compose music on xylophones using various modes, meters, and phrase structures. Students learn historical folk dance and choreograph original movement pieces. 

Students also start Choir, which rehearses twice a week. In Choir students learn to follow a conductor, read a choral score, sing in multi-part harmony, practice repertoire from various languages and genres, and make artistic choices as they prepare for performance.

Students explore:

• Composition and Improvisation on Xylophones
• Creative Movement and Choreography
• Musical Notation in Treble Clef
• Sea Chanties
• Early American Folk Dance
• Setting Poems to Music
• Choral Singing
• Following a Conductor & choral score
• Singing in various languages and genres

Our Engineering & Design program works with Level III in the following ways to help support:

• Design Thinking
• Computational Thinking curriculum support
• Crafting projects
• Prop Shop support
• Discrete student projects in the E&D Center
• Classroom teaching
• Long-term and large-scale building projects using power tools