Polaris students engage with rigorous curriculum and creatively implemented activities on a daily basis. They apply their learning and demonstrate understanding in a plethora of ways. Polaris staff are trained to meet the unique academic and affective needs of highly gifted students. An enriched and extended curriculum framework provides the foundation for learning experiences in which students are encouraged to achieve excellence in areas of strength and supported to make continuous growth in all academic areas.
Polaris offers creatively integrated curriculum and individual differentiation to help meet the unique needs of gifted learners. Students are grouped and regrouped flexibly on the basis of demonstrated educational need. Acceleration and compacting allow us to ensure that each student experiences success and just the right amounts of challenge!
Students are often involved in long-term projects that may integrate rigorous research, science, math, language arts and the visual/performing arts. The Polaris Program weaves the arts and technology into all curricular units. Our goal is for students to learn, to love learning and to be confident in their knowledge
We are proud of our specials experiences. Experts in their disciplines, our specials teachers play a critical role in helping our students become well-rounded collaborators, communicators, learners and thinkers. In their classes, students learn to work together to imagine,create, explore, research, appreciate beauty, and to critically evaluate topics.
At Polaris we utilize a Genre Study inquiry based approach to literature. Students are first immersed in a particular genre, then they begin to call out notable characteristics of the genre. Keeping charts and records of reading, students learn about how genre overlap and how and why “rules are bent”. Most importantly, as students engage in rich inquiry and discussion, they learn to think, to listen, to make claims and support those claims, to allow their thinking to change, and most importantly, new-found knowledge and confidence allows them to love reading more and more! Writing is also incorporated as students try their hands at writing in a particular genre. Additionally, reading and writing are integrated into science and social studies. Writing is taught as a discipline of beauty, of communication and as a vehicle to demonstrate learning and knowledge. Rigorous expectations, authentic tasks, and expert teaching ensure that students attain this valuable skill. The CKLA curriculum is utilized as a core resource at the primary grades.
The core curricular resource for science is Amplify. Our science units are characterized by deep discussion, arts integration and hands-on learning. Science lessons blend hands-on investigations, literacy-rich activities, and interactive digital tools to empower students to think, read, write, and argue like real scientists and engineers.
The core curricular resource for social studies is Inquiry Journeys. The standards aligned curriculum supports culturally responsive instruction, teaching strategies to support student voice and choice and connect to students’ experiences and interests. Lessons inspire inquiry based learning, building knowledge in history, civis, geography, economics through engaging investigations.
At Polaris, our core curriculum resource for math is Math in Focus. It is the U.S. edition of Singapore’s top-ranking math program. It follows the same scope, sequence, and pedagogy as the Singapore edition. The program is fully aligned to the Common Core Standards.
Math in Focus follows the pedagogical framework developed by the Singapore Ministry of Education: emphasizing concept mastery, a concrete-to-pictorial-to-abstract approach, metacognitive reasoning, and the use of model drawing to solve and justify problems.
Polaris students engage with rigorous and well-implemented math tasks on a daily basis and develop the thinking processes, habits of mind, and dispositions that students need to develop a deep, flexible, and enduring understanding of mathematics. Staff and students connect the Standards for Mathematical Practice and Equity Based Math Practices to the Standards for Mathematical Content. Students demonstrate flexibility by modeling their thinking and writing about their work in a variety of different ways.
Social Emotional Learning
Learn more about our daily SEL block as well as other SEL resources here.