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Academy Curriculum

The goal of IDEA Academy schools is to prepare students for success in our rigorous College Prep environment beginning in 6th grade. To achieve this ambitious goal, IDEA Public Schools provides our students with a rigorous and holistic curriculum approach in all subjects.  

K-5 Curriculum

English / Language Arts

English Language Arts (ELA) in grades K-5 at IDEA is composed of a few different curriculum components: a knowledge-building ELAR curriculum; Direct Instruction- Reading Mastering Transformations; and explicit writing instruction. With these resources combined, IDEA uses our ELA programming to ensure that our Academy students are prepared to be successful college graduates who will be culturally responsive citizens who excel in collaboration, critical and creative thinking, and communication. See below for details for our ELA curriculum:  

  • Knowledge-Building Curriculum: K-5 students will engage in knowledge building ELAR curriculum daily. Students are invited to read content-rich and complex texts that build their knowledge of important topics as they master literacy skills. Core texts are wide ranging, varied, and provide a careful balance of literary, informational, and fine art texts. Students engage in deep study of topics to build their knowledge of historical and scientific topics, growing in complexity from year to year. 
  • Direct Instruction: Reading Mastery Transformations: IDEA K-2 students will participate in Direct Instruction programming daily. Direct Instruction starts with an intense focus on systematic literacy instruction that includes the foundations of literacy: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. As a student progresses through these basic concepts, they acquire skills needed to become a transitional reader. By the end of all DI programs, students are exposed to more rigorous literacy and language elements with the goal of becoming a fluent reader.
  • Explicit Writing Instruction: IDEA students receive instruction in the essential elements of writing in different genres at their grade level. Students learn to write skillfully, creatively, abundantly, and with motivation in various genres and apply knowledge of grammar and mechanics to extended pieces.

Math

IDEA is dedicated to preparing students to get to and through college-level mathematics through a rigorous, vertically aligned mathematics program. This ambitious goal requires a conceptual approach to mathematics that often extends beyond the state’s requirements and standards. To ensure this begins with our earliest learners, our K-5 students will utilize Eureka Math, please see below for details.  

  • Eureka Math® is a clearly sequenced and comprehensive educational program that provides teachers with the knowledge and tools necessary to support students in building the grade-level mathematical concepts outlined in the grade-level standards while developing as thinkers and doers of mathematics. A key feature of Eureka Math is how the curriculum tells the unfolding story of mathematics as expressed in the standards, lesson by lesson, throughout each grade. The story’s main character is the unit—the basic building block of arithmetic. Themes such as measurement, place value, and fractions run throughout the story line, and each is given the amount of time proportionate to its role in the overall story. The story climaxes when students learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and to solve multistep word problems with multiplicative and additive comparisons. 

Social Studies

IDEA’s Social Studies programming in grades K-5 prepares our students to analyze complex moments in human history to deepen our students understanding of today’s society and their own identities. Students engage with social studies content through an expanding environments approach anchored in read aloud texts, close reading, writing opportunities, and projects. In K-2, students study their own identity, their families and families around the world, and communities near, far, past, and present. In 3-5, students follow state-specific social studies course sequences. While the content of these courses varies with focus on a combination of state history, United States history, world history, geography, and civics, courses are designed to meet state requirements and be a pathway toward our college preparatory social studies course sequence.

Science

IDEA’s Science programming in grades K-5 ensures that our students are prepared to study for and succeed in a STEM field and contribute as a scientifically literate citizen. Our Academy courses are geared towards building student’s love of science through engaging labs while ensuring rigorous student practice and individualized support.  Please see the details below of what our students learn throughout their IDEA Academy experience. 

  • K-2: Students in grade K-2 will use Amplify Science. Amplify Science is a phenomena-based science curriculum that blends hands-on investigations and literacy-rich activities to empower students to think, read, write, and argue like real scientists and engineers. Each unit starts with a phenomenon that students collect evidence from multiple sources to either build on what they know or challenge what they believe in a way that creates new learning. 
  • 3-5: Students in grades 3-5 engage in science lessons that build toward students’ love of science through engaging labs while ensuring rigorous student practice and laying the foundation for students to use science inquiry effectively to solve problems based off their evidence and reasoning.

Learn more about our College Prep Curriculum

COLLEGE PREP CURRICULUM