Academic Curriculum   

Social Studies  

MLC’s core curriculum is called Different Ways of Knowing, published by the Galef Institute. It is a thematic curriculum that engages students in developing understanding of social studies and history in the context of “big ideas” such as exploration, discovery, chance, change, community, and time. It features a discovery model of learning in which children build on their prior knowledge, research answers to their questions, develop expertise, and make connections. This engaging curriculum creates many opportunities for project-based learning and to integrate learning in language arts, social studies, math and science as well as the visual and performing arts, technology, and community service.

Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop  

MLC teaches reading and writing in Spanish and English through Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop developed at Teacher’s College at Columbia University. MLC’s literacy coach has been trained by the staff at Columbia University and provides professional development and coaching for teachers on site. The program design allows students to read and write at their own level and continue to grow and develop literacy skills in two languages. Readers and Writers Workshop is taught in Spanish in grades K-2 and in both languages beginning in third grade. Components of this balanced literacy program include: 

• mini-lessons to demonstrate strategies and skills 
• independent reading and writing time  
• reading and writing with partners 
• small group instruction (guided reading, strategy lessons, special interventions) 
• shared reading and interactive writing (teacher engages in reading or writing with students) 
• word study (phonemic awareness, letter representation, pre-fixes and suffixes, word families, spelling and vocabulary) 
• collaborative reading structures (reading clubs, reading centers) 
• sharing and publishing writing 
• ongoing student assessment of reading and writing skills and development 
• Reading at Home Program  

Math Trailblazers Grades K-5

Students develop mathematics concepts through Math Trailblazers, a balanced mathematics program that uses investigations of everyday situations as the setting for learning mathematics. The primary goal of Math Trailblazers has been to create an educational experience that results in children who are flexible math thinkers, who see the connections between the mathematics they learn in school the thinking they do in everyday life, and who enjoy mathematics. Math Trailblazers embraces the thought that children can succeed in mathematics and that if more is expected of them, more will be achieved. This curriculum incorporates the best of traditional mathematics, while widening the horizons of students’ mathematical thinking. 

Connected Math Project (CMP) Grades 6-8 

Connected Math Project is a complete mathematics curriculum for middle school students. CMP helps students develop understanding of important mathematical concepts, skills, procedures, and ways of thinking and reasoning, in number, geometry, measurement, algebra, probability and statistics. The overarching goal of the CMP is for all students to be able to reason and communicate proficiently in mathematics and to have knowledge of and skill in the use of the vocabulary, forms of representation, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods of the discipline of mathematics, including the ability to define and solve problems with reason, insight, inventiveness and proficiency. It is a great complement to our K-5 math curriculum Math Trailblazers.