Norwood's Curriculum

Art


Through artistic expression, students experience the delight, wonder, and self assurance that comes with creative accomplishment. Creative thinking and problem solving enhance learning in all subject areas. A wide range of materials, approaches, subject matter, and artists are presented.

Program Goals:

  • Discover the joy and delight of artistic creation to communicate thoughts and feelings in visual, nonverbal ways
  • Develop hands-on skill in using a variety of media, techniques, approaches, and processes of art
  • Develop over time, a technical vocabulary that will enable them to communicate appropriately and intelligently about art, both in its appreciation and production
  • Appreciate the art of many cultures, past and present
  • Understand that the creation of art is not a competitive endeavor, but a personal quest and a collective journey designed to enrich both the individual and the community

 

Chapel


Chapel brings students, faculty, and staff together in an atmosphere of tranquility, security, and thanksgiving. Services introduce students to a body of literature that teaches moral lessons including but not limited to stories from Judeo-Christian traditions. Chapel is also used to share stories about the lives of significant people in American and world history and to provide a forum for discussion of ethics and values. Music, especially singing, is an important part of Chapel. In addition, Chapel celebrates specific holidays and observances important to the community. Chapel is also an important time for faculty and students to share their interests and talents. Bringing the School together offers the opportunity to address school and community concerns and to celebrate successes.

Program Goals:

  • Teach a set of core values. These include the pursuit of knowledge, integrity, respect, responsibility, dilligence, kindness, cooperation, and service
  • Challenge students to use values as the basis for how they live their lives
  • Foster a sense of community in the School
  • Allow students time at the beginning of each day to reflect and contemplate
  • Set the tone for each day of school

Drama

Drama and performance opportunities in Grades K-8 serve to awaken imagination and creativity, to promote teamwork and problem solving skills, and to nurture self-confidence in participants. Older students learn acting, theatre history, and production along with the important skills and traits.

Program Goals:
  • Foster a love of theatre and performing arts
  • Provide enriching and challenging performing experiences for students
  • Stimulate students' imagination and creativity
  • Enhance students' ability and skills in the discipline of theatre and public speaking
  • Expose students to a wide variety of cultures, traditions, and topics in drama

Educational Technology

Educational technology extends and enriches learning and supports student inquiry and communication. Students gain mastery of information and media technologies: editing, publishing, multimedia authoring, electronic research and communication, and presentation techniques. The curriculum is designed so that technology should extend, enrich, and illuminate learning.

Program Goals:
  • Support and accommodate the individual needs and diverse learning styles of Norwood's student body with personalized instruction and assessment
  • Teach students to create, manage, and organize information, thereby enabling meaningful interpretation and presentation of facts, concepts, and ideas
  • Link learners to learning tools and digital information and educational sources
  • Promote student use of technology to evaluate information, test ideas, and increase knowledge for solving real-world problems using higher level thinking skills
  • Teach students to use technology tools and digital resources in an ethical manner

English/Language Arts/Reading

Good literature is stressed daily through reading aloud, group book study, and independent reading. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, supported by a selection of "Core Books," form the basis of each grade's literature curriculum. Students learn oral and written communication skills daily at age-appropriate levels, including mechanics, usage, and spelling skills in conjunction with the editing function. Research skills are used in increasingly sophisticated, expository reporting as students get older.

Program Goals:
  • Teach students to draw on literature to enrich the mind and nourish the soul
  • Create an awareness that communication is an essential skill for all areas of study
  • Advance each student's ability to communicate orally and with written expression to his or her highest level
  • Broaden social, cultural, and ethnic horizons
  • Explore questions of morality and character through the conflicts presented in literature
  • Create an appreciation and respect for great literature and create life-long readers

Experiential Education

Norwood students take several field trips every year to support the classroom curriculum. Beginning in third grade with a trip to Williamsburg, students go on one overnight trip per year. Fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students participate in overnight camping trips. The Experiential Education program culminates in the Eighth Grade with a trip to New York City which is tied to their study of the history of the Twentieth Century.

Program Goals:

  • Experience learning beyond the boundaries of the School
  • Learn social skills and teamwork as they apply to world outside the School
  • Understand the greater world around our students and the worth of the people near them through hands on experience

 

Family Life Education

Through Family Life Education (FLE), students are encouraged to develop wholesome attitudes regarding all stages of human growth and development. FLE, designed to encourage discussion at home as well as school, focuses on building self-knowledge and positive self-image.

Program Goals:
  • Promote the importance of families as the principle provider of family life education and value the evolving role that each member plays
  • Encourage responsibility for personal behavior and the well-being of others
  • Begin to establish values and lifetime decision-making skills at an age-appropriate level
  • Provide communication and decision-making strategies and skills that will assist in establishing goals, aspirations, and alternatives in making choices throughout the life cycle
  • Provide factual, age appropriate information about the way humans grow physiologically, and emotionally

Mathematics

The mathematics curriculum helps students become confident and successful problem solvers through experience with numbers, quantities, and measurement, and enables them to understand the connection between analytical thinking and a structured approach to problem solving in other disciplines.

Program Goals:
  • Foster proficiency in a variety of math skills
  • Explore multiple ways to solve problems and to allow students to share their strategies for problem solving
  • Foster an atmosphere where students are encouraged to ask questions and challenge themselves
  • Explore math through the use of current technology

Music

Norwood's music program is devoted to instilling a joyful sense of music in every child. It accomplishes this through a process which emphasizes creativity as well as musical literacy. Lower School students move to music, play melodic and rhythmic instruments, improvise and create their own melodies, and listen to a variety of folk, classical, jazz, and contemporary music. Annual class programs and the Christmas Pageant offer our students many opportunities for performing. Norwood has a tradition of integrating the arts with other classroom learning by developing musical presentations based on history, poetry, nature, and the cultures of specific countries. Musical presentations provide opportunities for children to develop self-confidence and are an exciting way to enhance learning. Performance continues to be an integral part of the Norwood music experience. Middle School students participate in the Winter and Spring Concerts; seventh and eighth graders put on a musical play each year.
Physical Education

Regular physical activity for each child is an important part of Norwood's total program. The Physical Education curriculum supports that belief with activities promoting physical fitness, athletic competancy, leadership, sportsmanship, and a lifelong commitment to healthful living.

Program Goals:
  • Provide instruction and coaching that challenges students to develop their skills to the highest level possible
  • Incorporate interdisciplinary acceptance and usage of the Program's S.E.L.F. Win Philosophy, one that promotes sportsmanship, effort, learning, and fun.
  • Provide an environment that welcomes and encourages the expression of diverse cultural traditions and values
  • Offer middle school students interscholastic, competitive experiences that promote self-confidence, perseverance, and positive social growth
  • Provide students with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to maintain a healthy lifestyle

Science

Students develop a strong foundation in scientific literacy. The program emphasizes fundamental themes, skills, and attitudes of science. Teaching methods reflect the scientific endeavor, helping students develop their own questions and answers in a creative, yet logical way.

Program Goals:
  • Capture, maintain, and expand children's natural curiosity and to a desire to pursue lifelong learning in science
  • Expose children to a broad range of topics in science to create a basic science literacy for future study
  • Instill in children the confidence to understand scientific phenomena
  • Make children aware of how science relates to everyday life
  • Cultivate a sense of care and responsibility towards the environment

Social Studies and History

The social studies curriculum embraces broad aspects of living and learning. History and geography are the core of the program while interdisciplinary enrichment is drawn from literature, writing, science, mathematics, music, drama, and art.

Program Goals:
  • Recognize the many similarities and differences among the different cultures of the world, and appreciate multiple perspectives in an increasingly global world
  • Understand the founding principles of democracy, especially as understood in the United States
  • Appreciate the moral values and sense of responsibility necessary to become good citizens
  • Gain the critical thinking skills needed to question, find, analyze, and evaluate information considering multiple perspectives

World Languages

A communicative and oral/aural approach is used to emphasize the development of world language skills and the importance of learning about other cultures. Students take Spanish beginning in Kindergarten and may switch to Latin, French, or Chinese in later years. Classes are taught mostly in the target language.

Program Goals:
  • Develop proficiency and skill in using the target language
  • Prepare students for success in language study in secondary school
  • Broaden students' world knowledge, and expose students to the diverse wyas people live
  • Enhance students' knowledge of linguistics, grammar, and vocabulary roots in English and the target languages

Study Skills

In addition to encouraging creativity and varied interests in all of its students, Norwood recognizes the vital importance of basic study skills to success and enjoyment in all areas of learning.

In the Lower School, classroom procedures are designed to promote orderly interaction, clear thinking, and verbal expression. Children are encouraged to listen attentively, to follow oral directions, and to present their work in a neat and organized way. Students learn the routine of being accountable for brief assignments completed at home. As they move through the Lower School, children are given a weekly organizer in which they write all of their homework assignments and are assigned a multi-part, long-term project, designed to teach them the importance of budgeting their time.

Fourth grade and early Middle School, the fifth and sixth grades, are years of steadily increasing homework, long-term projects, and multi-part assignments. Students in these grades are given a plan book in which to keep an ongoing record of their responsibilities. Test taking, essay writing, and text reading skills are developed throughout the curriculum. Outlining, note taking, and the multistep process of writing a research paper are all taught and practiced so that by the end of sixth grade, students are able to work through a large research project, complete with end notes and bibliography.

In the seventh and eighth grades, the daily homework load again increases along with the depth and complexity of long term assignments. Students are expected to have command of the rudiments of organization discussed above and to be able to apply these strategies in an appropriate way to their work. Homework assignments will be available for middle school students through Norwood's website. Every seventh and eighth grader participates in weekly advising sessions. Individual learning styles, organization of time and materials, and preparation for taking standardized tests are some of the topics covered.
Values and Character Education

Norwood's aim is to provide an environment in which important values are modeled by adults and openly acknowledged and supported by all throughout the school. Norwood believes that schools should work with parents in the development of a child's values. Teachers and administrators provide explicit and implicit values instruction during the morning chapel service and throughout the school day. Students are taught to be respectful and thoughtful of others and to celebrate diversity while understanding and appreciating the commonality that exists within the human family.

Norwood encourages children to be active and responsible members of the School community and to be honest and forthright in their interactions with both peers and adults. Both the Lower and Middle Schools offer many opportunities for leadership and character building. Projects, performances, presentations, activities, and athletic events give students the chance to organize, lead, and work cooperatively. Daily chapel for all and regular advisory meetings for seventh and eighth graders provide a forum for talk about moral and ethical issues. Norwood students are helped to develop a strong sense of self and self-worth and to set high standards for their own behavior. By openly supporting worthwhile values, Norwood fosters in its students a recognition of concerns beyond those that are immediate.

Ethics and life skills are the focus of a course for seventh and eighth graders in which students deal with real-life situations that encourage them to go beyond the simple differences between right and wrong. They discuss issues in small groups or with the whole class and try to both identify problems or topics and think through the possible consequences of decisions and choices.
Writing

Norwood encourages its students to appreciate and enjoy writing. The children are guided through successive structural and grammatical skills to develop clear, forceful expository writing and effective, satisfying creative expression. The children hear and read masters of poetry, prose, and drama. The individual creativity of each child is celebrated in his or her development as a writer.
Advisory, Clubs and Intersession

In seventh and eighth grade, two periods a week are devoted to advising. Also available to students is the opportunity to establish various clubs sponsored by faculty members. Study hall is also an option during this time.

The mission of Norwood School is "to assure that each of its children grows intellectually, morally, physically, and socially." The aim of the advisor/student advisory program is to guide middle school students towards greater self awareness of their development in these areas and to support them in making their quest for independence a healthy and safe journey. Seventh and eighth grade teachers act as advisors advocating for the students: one adult responsible for knowing one student well, both academically and emotionally. Connections between the advisor and the advisee are made to provide safety, support, and encouragement. The advisor is the initial point of contact for the student, parent, and teacher in all areas of school life. During twice weekly scheduled advisory group meetings, more private one-onone meetings and informal interactions, advisors guide students through academic and social issues inherent both in and out of school. Students also eat lunch with their advisor and advisory group on a regular basis. The advisory program is not meant to act as a counseling program but does provide each student with regular, compassionate, and supportive guidance. Intersession is a four-day period between semesters in which students choose from a variety of activities, including a study of heart surgery, visits to interactive museums, creation of murals, sewing, furniture construction, and many more. Seventh and eighth grade faculty direct these activities, thus allowing for more informal, non-graded contact between adults and students.

Community Service

The community service program in Grades K-8 provides an opportunity for children to reach out to the broader community with a caring spirit and ac active willingness to serve. Compassion, sharing, responsibility, and respect for others are discussed in Chapel and in class. Projects which carry the program from articulation to action provoke awareness of the myriad of needs of others.

Program Goals:
  • Grow morally
  • Become productive and generous citizens
  • Develop the awareness of hte needs of community, locally, nationally, and internationally
  • Develop the core values of respect, responsibility, kindness, cooperation, and service
  • Learn to respect and protect the dignity and worth of all members of the community