Academics
An Education Not Simply Accomplished, But Lived
Our curriculum is based on a profound understanding of human development, with the insight that comprehensive and rigorous academics shall be exciting, engaging, and imbued with artistic expression.
Eastside Community School intends to provide a rich variety of subjects and activities for grade school students in harmony with the different stages of child development. Students will emerge with knowledge, courage, enthusiasm, creativity and a solid sense of how to reason. They will meet the world more deeply prepared to face life’s challenges.
Planned Curriculum:
Science
Our approach to science is similar to the process of discovery that scientists have undertaken for ages: exploring the natural processes around us, demonstrating phenomena, and asking students to explain the cause through observation and by drawing conclusions.
Younger children learn the basics of science through outdoor play and experimentation in nature. In grades three through five, plant and animal facts are connected to human activities through storytelling. Formal lab science begins in grade six.
Math
Geography
Language Arts
World Mythology and History
We take math from the written page into the physical world, teaching young students mathematical basics in part through movement of the body. Students might clap the multiplication tables, find Pythagoras’ theorem with lentils, or walk the addition of negative and positive numbers. Not only do activities strengthen number sense and confident computation, they enhance students’ performance during daily, more traditional mental and written math exercises. The combined approach helps prepare students for challenges such as algebra, geometry and business math in middle school.
Storytelling is at the heart of learning to understand and to love the English language. Students compose stories based on their learning and read what they wrote to others—both exciting steps as they progress toward the complex expression of moods in poetry and short story plots. The study of grammar as the skeleton of language supports this writing as well as the scientific summaries and works students create for other subjects. Drama and oral recitation deepen the students’ speaking and acting skills as well as their understanding of myths and classics.
Our geography curriculum begins in our own schoolyard and expands through the years to cover people and places worldwide. The depth and breadth of understanding develops as the students do, with map-making beginning in grade four and gaining complexity as they progress.
Our curriculum follows the pattern that has unfolded throughout human history. We explore the development of civilization and the great stories of all time, from fairy tales and fables to Nordic and Greek myths to medieval, Roman, Renaissance, and modern history, which the class teacher brings to life through oral storytelling. Written and artistic work follows, further deepening students’ understanding.