Our classrooms, called clusters and identified by color names, are all multi-age and team-taught. Each cluster has its own bungalow and two teachers share the space and the students in an open-structured environment. Subject areas and disciplines are integrated and interrelated in a rich curriculum organized around our school wide environmental theme of Interdependence: Human Interaction with the Environment. Within this curriculum, subject areas are connected to central concepts or key ideas. Skills, activities, and projects are linked through higher order processes used to construct meaning, solve problems and discover relationships. Our thematic approach puts the teachers in charge of the curriculum and its materials and allows students’ interests to help guide lessons and activities so that students connect their knowledge and understanding at a deeper level.

While every cluster has a constructivist approach to integrated thematic instruction, each has a unique emphasis based on a theme developed by each team. Themes guide curricular organization and subject area content, providing a framework for meaningful implementation of State and District standards.