Academics

Curriculum

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

Explore Our Curriculum

Grade

Small Group Instruction

List of 3 items.

Benefits of a Small Group Model
- 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.