In pursuit of Excellence in Academics for the elementary campus, the NCS Board and the administrative team have spent many hours reviewing recent parent surveys, achievement test scores, and recommendations from faculty members. Various academic committees were formed to review in depth the different curriculum areas that we wished to focus on for the upcoming school year. Curriculum committees were well-rounded, including board members, administrative team members, elementary and secondary faculty members and elementary parents. Each curriculum committee focused on a particular academic subject in an effort to research products currently available on the market that would best suit the needs of our students. Our goal was to choose curriculum materials that would be student, teacher and parent friendly. They needed to be able to reach all students effectively by using a variety of learning styles in an appealing and interesting manner. Methods and frequency of assessment were also an important factor. The flexibility provided for teachers to differentiate instruction for each student was a crucial aspect of the curriculum. Technology components and home links were vital as well.

In an attempt to give our students the very best, each committee drew up a proposal to present to the administrative team for approval. Hours of research, perusing curriculum samples, intense discussions, and information gathering went into each committee’s decisions. We are pleased to present our curriculum enhancements for the 2007-2008 school year.

BIBLE
At the heart of every Christian school should be effective Bible study that allows each student to develop his own faith in Christ. A personal relationship with the Lord is developed through avid study of His Word, daily prayer, praise, worship, service to others, and being in tune with the way He works for good in our lives. Our goal at NCS is to hide God’s Word in our students’ hearts to guide them in their choices now and in the future. In an effort to help our students grow in faith, we will be using the Biblical Choices for a New Generation curriculum from Standard Publishing in grades K-3. This curriculum is specifically designed for use in a Christian School setting to help students develop a Christian worldview grounded in Scripture. It features sequential study of the Bible in each grade level using the New International Version of the Bible. Each year it focuses on the Old Testament in the fall and the New Testament in the spring. An important feature of this curriculum is that it will provide opportunities for our students to practice newly learned Godly choices. Music and art are integrated into the lessons. Frequent parent letters are included to provide parents with pertinent information regarding memory verses and themes being taught. Letters will suggest ideas for reinforcing the Bible learning at home as well.

Our fourth grade students will continue to use the Picture This! Bible curriculum that was successfully implemented two years ago. This curriculum is unique in that it is able to reach all types of learners whether they are auditory, visual or kinesthetic. Students literally draw their way through the NIV Bible. With the actual Bible as their text, students complete detailed drawings using symbols to represent key concepts being learned. Our fourth graders report that they have enjoyed using this curriculum. They often beg the teacher to make the Bible class last longer.

Our fifth graders will be continuing their study of the Fruits of the Spirit and their unit on purity. This year they will be adding a unit on Christian Evidences that will help them anchor their belief in the authenticity of the Bible and its teachings.

Spanish
Your child is invited to take part in a high-energy and fun-filled Conversational Spanish class for Elementary age students. Our emphasis will be on using Spanish in real life situations. Games, songs, art, stories, puppets, and movement will be the springboards that we use for learning. Your child will be ACTIVE and INVOLVED in the learning process. Spanish class will be offered after school from 3:10 PM until 4:10 PM and will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Moving our Spanish to after school will help in two important ways. It will help free up more time during the regular school day to focus on our core subjects and it will allow us to devote adequate time each week (2 hours) toward Spanish. Barbara Cano will be teaching our after school Spanish program. Barbara worked with children for 18 years in Guatemala and Mexico as a teacher in a school setting, as a Sunday school teacher, and in a children's program of evangelism as well. She has been at NCS for 5 years teaching Spanish to our secondary students. We are so blessed to now have her bridging the elementary and secondary Spanish programs.

We need to get an idea of how many of our parents are interested in enrolling your student in our after school Spanish program. Please send an email to me at khart@northlandchristian.org as soon as possible letting me know if you are interested in enrolling your child in the program. Please include your child's name and grade level. There will be additional expenses for this after school program. More details will come later.

Art
Art will no longer be a pull out subject but will be integrated into the other curriculum areas by each classroom teacher.

Technology
We will continue our development of integrating technology into each classroom and curriculum area. Technology is just one tool that we need to teach and use to enhance the learning environment for each of our students. Students and teachers will continue to use the elementary lab and COWS (computers on wheels) to foster this integration.

MATH
Last year in grades 3-5 we implemented the Math Expressions curriculum from Houghton Mifflin, published in 2006. This curriculum was chosen in an effort to provide a more well-balanced math program that focused not only on computation but on critical thinking and analysis as well. We will be adding this curriculum to grades K-2 this year. The publisher will be providing in-depth training for all of our math teachers to assist them in utilizing this curriculum to its fullest potential. Below is a detailed description of the program, its components and the research behind it taken from the COMAP (Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications) website.

Math Expressions is a complete Kindergarten—Grade 5 elementary mathematics curriculum based on the research results of the Children’s Math Worlds Research Project (CMW Project). The research was funded primarily from grants from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Karen C. Fuson, now Professor Emeritus of Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, is the Principal Investigator of the CMW Project and author of Math Expressions. The program was developed over more than a ten-year period, in both urban and suburban classrooms with 5,000 students and 200 teachers. Both the program and the research combine a focus on conceptual understanding and on fluency with both problem solving and computation.
Math Expressions was developed to meet the national need for a balanced program that could

• combine the focus on understanding of reform math programs with the focus on fluency of more traditional approaches,
• use an approach that emphasized in-depth sustained learning of ambitious core grade-level concepts rather than a spiral curriculum that does not allow for mastery and fluency,
• expand the types of word problems to those solved by other countries and use an algebraic approach to word problem solving,
• use math drawings made by students and research-based visual representations in each math domain to support student understanding and class discussion of mathematical thinking,
• find and use computational algorithms that relate easily to the present common U.S. algorithms but can be understood and used more easily by students,
• start where students are, continually elicit their thinking, but provide visual and linguistic support for understanding that all children use,
• bring all children to fluency in the core computational topics that form the central part of the elementary curriculum while still covering other important mathematical topics.

Key Features of Math Expressions:
• Implements the findings from recent national reports on math learning (How People Learn, Adding It Up) and the Professional Standards for School Mathematics from NCTM (2000).
• Uses ambitious, in-depth core grade-level topics, not a spiral curriculum, with topics organized coherently across grades, minimizing the need for review while recognizing the realities of today’s classroom.
• Includes research-based strategies and accessible algorithms that relate easily to common methods, which are also discussed in the program.
• Allows students to develop and explain their own strategies.
• Uses core classroom activity structures so teachers and students can concentrate on mathematical ideas.
• Focuses on math drawings, as well as manipulatives, to support students’ attention, conceptual understanding, and communication about their mathematical thinking.
• Contains approaches that work with a very broad range of students, due to its development in many different kinds of classrooms.
• Uses five basic classroom structures: Building Concepts, Math Talk, Student Leaders, Helping Community, and Quick Practice; the synergies among these structures are increased by the use of student math drawings.

In Math Expressions, Grades K and 1 consist of completely integrated units, and for Grades 2–5, longer units that focus on word problems, computation, algebra, and data are followed by shorter units that focus on visual and conceptual approaches to geometry and measurement and apply previously learned mathematics. This organization is a result of teacher and student feedback during the CMW Project. At each grade level, the program includes a two-volume Teacher’s Guide, Student Activity Books, consumable Homework and Remembering Workbooks, a Teacher’s Resource Book, an Assessment Guide, dry erase MathBoards, a comprehensive Manipulatives and Materials Kit, CD-ROM Lesson Planner and Test Generator.

Scientific Research Summary
The Children’s Math Worlds Project received funding from the National Science Foundation: two major research grants and a materials development grant to conduct research on how students could learn more deeply in various domains and to develop curriculum materials in addition and subtraction computation and word problems. Additional financial support was provided by grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program.
The project began in 1993 and funding from the grants ended in 2003. The major research was carried out in Spanish-speaking as well as English-speaking classrooms. The materials development work was carried out in urban high-poverty classrooms as well as in middle-income and wealthy classrooms. All research focused on the methods of teaching in various domains, and the formative results have been folded into revisions in every year, with most grade levels revised at least five times in response to teacher feedback and observations of students in classrooms.

The Children's Math Worlds Research Project carried out ten years of research, working with over 200 teachers, 5,000 students, and many parents and administrators to identify learning approaches accessible to all children. The project identified accessible computational methods that all children can understand and carry out independently; designed visual learning supports on which students can draw to show math concepts (the MathBoards); developed learning paths that move from these visual supports to sketched math drawings linked to math notation and then to independent but meaningful computation activities; developed accessible paths to fractions and ratio and proportion; and developed an algebraic approach and visual-conceptual tools for word problem solving.

Other key research factors influencing the program are the power of student drawings to express math thinking and support math discussions, the kinds of algorithms that fit student thinking and relate easily to current methods, developmental sequences of student strategies in math domains, student conceptual language, visual representations to support understanding, and types of word problems. Features of the program that reflect this research include coherent in-depth learning paths, ongoing interactions between individual and whole-class learning, differentiated instruction within whole-class activities, and research-based models, strategies, and algorithms that help all students.
Visit the Math Expressions Website (at http://eduplace.com/math/mthexp/) for more details about the program, including teacher, student, and family resources, and research links.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Reading - Guided Reading
Last year we implemented the Wright Group’s Gear Up guided reading series in grades 1-2. This curriculum includes a well-balanced mix of fiction and non-fiction literature in full color paperback books. These books are leveled using the Fountas and Pinnell leveling system which is very similar to the Reading Recovery leveling system. This curriculum allows our teachers to work with students in very small groups. Each student advances through the different levels at his own pace by receiving direct instruction from the teacher, as well as independent practice. We will now be offering this curriculum series to our kindergarten students in the spring semester who are ready for more challenging texts. This curriculum will allow our kindergarten teachers to expand their reading program to more effectively meet the needs of each individual child.

Fluency
There are five key components that should be included in every successful reading program. These components include phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. NCS will be explicitly teaching all of these aspects of reading using a variety of methods in multiple subjects. One area that we wish to focus more intensely on is fluency. Fluency is key to reading comprehension. It is the ability to read text accurately and quickly while using good melody and expression. Decoding abilities, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary all contribute to fluency. Research shows that fluency should be taught at an early age instead of waiting until it becomes a problem. We will be teaching fluency directly to our kindergarten through 3rd grade students using the Wright Group’s Fluency First program. Fluency First is a scientifically researched supplemental curriculum designed for grades K-3. It can be integrated into all literacy programs. It is based on the Fluency Development Lesson, cited by the Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000, as an effective instructional model. The lessons are fast-paced 15-20 min. instructional routines daily. The program is ½ year for Kindergarten and a whole year for grades 1-3. The curriculum consists of repeated and monitored readings of high-interest texts to promote mastery of fluency, word recognition and comprehension. Texts include fiction and non-fiction selections. Teachers will utilize choral readings, paired readings, oral recitations, parent involvement at home, and performances in the classroom. The Florida Center for Reading Research highly recommends this program because of its effectiveness and the fact that it is so teacher friendly.

Phonics and Phonemic Awareness
We will continue to teach explicit phonics and phonemic awareness in grades K-3 using the Neuhaus Language Enrichment method. Research shows that emerging readers who receive phonemic awareness training score significantly higher in reading and spelling in grades 1, 2, and 3. Below is a description of the Neuhaus method taken directly from their website.

The Neuhaus Education Center, a nonprofit foundation established in 1980, is dedicated to providing teacher professional development in research-based methods of literacy instruction. We provide a structured approach to teaching the basic language skills of reading, writing, and spelling, an approach that is valuable for all students and essential for those with dyslexia. In addition, the Center is a resource for parental consultation and for adults seeking literacy education.

NCS has used the Neuhaus Language Enrichment method in previous years with great success. This is a method of teaching, not a specific curriculum. Our primary teachers will be trained in this method and will be able to incorporate it with our grammar, Reading Readiness and guided reading programs.

Spelling and Vocabulary
NCS has adopted a new spelling curriculum for the upcoming school year. The language arts committee has proposed the use of the Houghton Mifflin Spelling and Vocabulary series in grades 1-5. This curriculum was published in 2006 and comes highly recommended to us by the Neuhaus Education Center. It includes the following:
• Spelling and phonics
• Spelling and vocabulary
• Spelling and writing
• Standardized test practice
• Content area vocabulary
• Ongoing teacher support

Each student will be provided with his own consumable workbook that gives spelling lists for each week. Students’ skills and understanding will be advanced through important spelling principles and patterns. Students will be able to increase their word knowledge and vocabulary through the use of analogies and derivational roots.
Our spelling teachers will be trained in the Neuhaus method of Scientific Spelling. This method teaches the reliable spelling patterns of the English language, all the major spelling rules and a multisensory procedure for permanently memorizing irregular words. This method dovetails nicely with our new Houghton Mifflin Spelling and Vocabulary series.

English and Writing
The language arts committee has proposed that we adopt the Houghton Mifflin English and Writing curriculum, published in 2006, for grades K-5. Using the same publisher that we do for Spelling and Vocabulary will help provide continuity for the teachers and students. This curriculum comes highly recommended to us by other schools that are using it successfully. The language arts committee included English and writing teachers from our secondary campus. They were very impressed with this curriculum and agreed that it will provide an excellent knowledge base for our students and prepare them for the transition from elementary to the upper grades.

This curriculum has developmentally appropriate lessons that concentrate on grammar, usage, and mechanics skills, as well as 6-traits writing. The kindergarten program is set up in the form of centers and interactive bulletin boards. Comprehensive instructional and planning tools provide lesson objectives and teaching language that focuses on instruction, practice and application. Student editions include writing models and other resources. Students progress from writing sentences to paragraphs and essays to master all content-area writing. This is accomplished through fluency-building exercises, proofreading, revising practice, a thorough reference section at the back of the book, graphic organizers, and rubrics. Kidspiration and Inspiration software will flow well with this writing program. Daily Oral Language practice and frequent editing are also included. The program is very teacher friendly. The textbooks are colorful with bold print that is easy to read. The textbooks are visually appealing. They integrate science, social studies and art. Technology links and home connections are also included.