From kindergarten through eighth grade, students experience hands-on learning that is academically rigorous, IEP-driven, and aligned with the Common Core State Standards. They learn how to ask questions, find answers, and work with others to share new knowledge. Field trips and special activities off campus connect the students’ classroom learning with the world-class resources available in the Washington, D.C., area.

Standards

While mandated by Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), our students participate in our bilingual, learner-centered, and technology-driven curriculum while meeting multiple rigorous academic standards including:

Maryland Common Core Standards – English & Math :   http://www.corestandards.org

A set of clear college and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English Language Arts and Mathematics. Each set of standards contain several focus areas including reading literature and informational texts, writing, language usage, Algebra, modeling, geometry, and statistics & probability. Not limited to English and Math, the standards push the students to read complex texts that provide facts and background knowledge in other content areas including science, technology, social studies, and the arts.

Clerc Center K-12 ASL Standards : https://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/ndec/educational-resources/asl-content-standards

Our bilingual Deaf students embrace American Sign Language as their first language. Therefore, we use this set of standards that are designed to teach students the knowledge and skills of ASL expressive and receptive signing, ability to analyze the structures of ASL at all linguistic levels, enhancing comprehension and production of ASL, competency of creating and analyzing ASL texts, and obtaining a greater proficiency in ASL that results in high-order conceptual thinking, critical literacy skills, and more refined analytical skills. Some of the anchor standards are aligned with the Maryland Common Core English Language Arts standards.

Next Generation Science Standards: https://www.nextgenscience.org/

With our STEAM courses available for our students, we abide by the Next Generation Science Standards. The set of standards with three structure components,   Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts, are different than other science standards because the implemented objectives enable students to learn science by doing science. This has made a major shift in our classroom instruction and student-centered learning.