Curriculum
At Broward Community Charters & Discovery Middle, students are offered a very special curriculum called Core Knowledge. It is based on some of the ideas presented by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. in his well-known books, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, and further developed by the foundation he established in 1986.
As your child proceeds in school from month to month and year to year, he or she will be exposed to a broad range of historical, scientific and cultural topics that will build on one another and prepare the student for later educational success. Much more than the traditional "reading writing and arithmetic" (and of course, those are mastered here), this exposure to a wide array of subject matter is intended not only to develop cultural literacy but also to build a strong vocabulary now recognized, along with decoding skills, to be absolutely necessary for true reading comprehension.
Cultural literacy, or familiarity with the traditions and knowledge commonly shared by educated citizens in a society is sometimes acquired in informal ways as well as by formal study. Core Knowledge tries to develop cultural literacy in a way that is systematic but leaves lots of room for creativity. This curriculum eliminates some of the gaps and repetitions that frequently characterize a curriculum in which textbooks and programs are selected more or less at random.
Visit the following websites for detailed information on our curriculum:
http://www.saxonpublishers.com (phonics, spelling, and mathematics)
http://www.coreknowledge.org (cultural literacy)
http://www.characterfirst.com (character education)
As your child proceeds in school from month to month and year to year, he or she will be exposed to a broad range of historical, scientific and cultural topics that will build on one another and prepare the student for later educational success. Much more than the traditional "reading writing and arithmetic" (and of course, those are mastered here), this exposure to a wide array of subject matter is intended not only to develop cultural literacy but also to build a strong vocabulary now recognized, along with decoding skills, to be absolutely necessary for true reading comprehension.
Cultural literacy, or familiarity with the traditions and knowledge commonly shared by educated citizens in a society is sometimes acquired in informal ways as well as by formal study. Core Knowledge tries to develop cultural literacy in a way that is systematic but leaves lots of room for creativity. This curriculum eliminates some of the gaps and repetitions that frequently characterize a curriculum in which textbooks and programs are selected more or less at random.
Visit the following websites for detailed information on our curriculum:
http://www.saxonpublishers.com (phonics, spelling, and mathematics)
http://www.coreknowledge.org (cultural literacy)
http://www.characterfirst.com (character education)
