Academics

Curriculum

Welcome

As a school dedicated to providing an exceptional elementary education, Tenacre seeks to nurture and challenge students over a broad range of academic subjects.

Every child at Tenace is a full participant, a valued contributor to our vibrant community. In classrooms, on our playing fields, in art, music, and drama, our students are actively engaged in their own education. It is our belief that when every child has multiple opportunities to succeed, every child can and will succeed.

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The Schoolhouse: Tenacre's Earliest Years
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In the Schoolhouse, home to pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade, we strive to nurture and challenge each child, every day by providing our students with opportunities for social, emotional, and academic growth through hands-on learning activities. Our goal is to give children the tools they need to access the world and aid them in developing a strong understanding of self as a member of the global community. We do this by prioritizing social-emotional development while supporting children as they build foundational skills across academic domains. Our focus on building community, engaging in identity exploration, and creating lasting relationships with peers and adults alike creates an environment in which students are empowered to take risks and feel confident in their ability to face challenges. In the Schoolhouse, children embark on an educational journey that is part of an 8-year plan and engenders a lifetime love of learning. We believe that when children love learning from an early age, it defines how they approach learning at every age.
- The Schoolhouse has an overarching mission that encompasses the needs and provides growth opportunities for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade students
- A carefully planned academic and social-emotional curriculum progresses through all grades at Tenacre, with a particular focus on social-emotional growth in the Schoolhouse.
- The Schoolhouse teachers foster the Schoolhouse sense of community with monthly meetings in which all pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade students gather.
- The Schoolhouse teachers themselves meet regularly to collaborate and make sure their curriculum is connected in important ways.

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Public Speaking: Finding Your Voice
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Learning to speak confidently in front of a group is a life skill that Tenacre nurtures in all of its students. Starting at the earliest age, students gain experience standing up in front of groups and speaking. In pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, students serve as class leaders at morning meetings. Opportunities for these types of experiences are built into the daily experience for students in all grades. Throughout their years as a Tenacre student, students learn to find their voices as they participate in class plays and take the lead in grade-level classroom presentations and all-school assemblies. By the time students are in sixth grade, they have substantial experience speaking in front of groups. Sixth graders continue to hone their skills, presenting at Admission events and leading tours during Open Houses, volunteering for solos during the December Celebration holiday performance, taking the lead in making all-school announcements at assemblies and lunch, and participating in lead roles for the spring musical.

Class plays also represent an important role in helping students feel comfortable finding their voices. Tenacre’s philosophy is that all children have an active role in class plays, which allows them additional experience in expressing themselves on stage and in front of an audience. For more information, please visit our Class Plays webpage.

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Individualized Instruction: Small, Flexible Academic Groups
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Tenacre’s small group model offers immense educational benefits. The low student-to-teacher ratio allows every student to participate more fully; more participation leads to increased student understanding and confidence; and teachers can differentiate their instruction to meet the group’s needs.
Tenacre is committed to providing students with a strong foundation of skills, especially in math and reading, which are often referred to as the building blocks of an elementary school education. Tenacre creates small, flexible groups for instruction in both disciplines. Many schools have small groups, but Tenacre’s team teaching model, with the addition of the reading or math coordinator, allows a full-time teacher to teach and work closely with each small group. At Tenacre, students grow into joyful learners, ready to take the next step in their lives and education with confidence and purpose.

Benefits
- The opportunity to receive and give immediate feedback
- More hands-on tasks to build student understanding and confidence
- Teachers are able to motivate and build confidence through personal interactions
- Students build communication skills through increased participation
- Pacing can be adjusted to the groups’ needs
- Instruction is differentiated and targeted
Group Configuration
For reading, Grades 1 and 2 have four teachers (about 6 students per group), and Grades 3 and 4 have three teachers (about 8-9 students per group). In math, Grades 1-6 have three groups per class, with approximately seven to nine students per group.

Group Membership
Groups are constructed and adjusted based on assessment data and teacher observation of daily work. Students are grouped according to their knowledge and skills at a particular point in time and the skill set they need to acquire to demonstrate grade level proficiency. For example, second grade students solidifying decoding skills would be grouped together so the teacher could target the phonetic elements they need to review, while at the same time working on comprehension goals shared by all groups. In math, during a third grade unit on place value with numbers in the 1000s, students who are still working to build conceptual knowledge would be grouped together and focus on using concrete materials to support their work, while another group, still working on place value, would be applying their solidified knowledge to solve abstract word problems.