Discovery School of Innovation is devoted to providing an exceptional academic experience while building well-balanced, life-long learners that are the future thinkers and problem solvers of the world.
Cultivating Extraordinary Thinkers
Literacy
At DSI, we know that reading and writing skills do not always develop linearly. Our team of literacy experts have created a skills continuum from Kindergarten to 6th grade, allowing teachers to identify students’ competencies and areas of growth over time. Our spiraling curriculum lets students build on their strengths as they set new learning goals and work to achieve them.
Story Workshop & Writer’s Workshop
We view children as capable writers with wonderful stories to share. We use a Story Workshop model to support writing development. During writing time, children are given opportunities to play with materials and use the arts to bring the images in their stories alive. Our teachers confer one-on-one with each child to focus on appropriate skills and bring clarity to their writing.
Students also engage in Writer’s Workshop, where they explore the writing process, story structure, craft, and language conventions. Through mini-lessons focused on the craft of writing, we introduce a variety of strategies and genres applicable to each grade level. We focus on a five-step writing process: capturing an idea, transferring that idea to a draft, revising and editing, and publishing. Finally, Author’s Chair is used to share pieces of work, giving young authors valuable peer feedback.
Reader's Workshop
Our classrooms cultivate a “Culture of Literacy” in which students have ample opportunities to engage with various genres and types of texts. Teachers utilize a variety of resources to teach phonics, decoding, and comprehension skills.
Working with small, guided reading groups that support and build students’ skills at developmentally appropriate levels (which fluctuate throughout the school year), teachers carefully monitor the reading development of each child. Reader’s Workshop is a time for students to participate in a variety of whole-class activities, small group work, partner collaboration, and independent work.
MATH
Our math program is built around the Singapore Math curriculum, which develops proficiency through the use of concrete materials, followed by pictorial representations, and finally algorithmic equations. In K-2 students gain a deep understanding of mathematical concepts so they can apply their knowledge in a multitude of contexts.
We believe that students’ mindset about math is equally important to their skill development. We explore the benefits of challenges to help students foster a growth mindset about mathematics.
In K-2 we focus on developing “number sense,” the flexible and fluid thinking about numbers that allows us to work with them. Students learn a variety of math strategies and practice them with plenty of manipulatives.
Additionally, we engage students in the deep problem solving and representative thinking that defines mathematics. We model how to talk about math and share “math thinking” in groups. We tackle long-form math challenges (i.e. problems that require multiple days to solve) and ask students to represent their thinking in various ways and explain their reasoning to others. Through this collaborative work, they learn to see problems in multiple ways.
Design Thinking/Trial and Error
We believe that for optimal learning, children must be given the time to play and experience materials as they use their background knowledge, imagination, and are inspired by others. Using the Design Thinking model of Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test > Refine, students tackle various design challenges that encourage them to empathize with others, think creatively, and utilize feedback to improve their design.
Through design thinking, students learn skills that help them define problems in our world, devise solutions, and refine those solutions through collaboration.
If you set strict parameters or give instructions for design prior to allowing students to show you what they can create, you will never learn what they are capable of creating and limit their potential. Adult mentors are present to facilitate learning and capitalize on learning opportunities at they present themselves.
Our students learn that trial and error are an important part of the learning process. Failure is an invitation to learn and improve.
Through design exploration, we help students build skills that will allow them to approach new technologies with an inquiring mind.
SCIENCE
Each child’s natural curiosity is the fuel for our inquiry-based Science curriculum. The curriculum is based on the Next Generation Science Standards. Students are encouraged to act as scientists and explore a variety of alternatives, using trial and error to arrive at their conclusions. Through hands-on learning and meaningful projects, students formulate their own scientific understandings with the teacher acting as a facilitator in the learning process.
Scientific learning is integrated across the curriculum in through meaningful projects and activities.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Our Social Studies curriculum prepares students to be responsible global citizens. Students participate in engaging, enjoyable learning activities. Through experience, students are able to understand that there are multiple perspectives to historical events.
Students have the opportunity to role-play and communicate their interpretation of events with others as they learn how others have a different understanding of the same events.
Through student inquiry and content knowledge, students are equipped with the tools necessary to make informed personal and civic decisions.
We also offer Art, Music, Spanish, Physical Education, Robotics/Technology, and Yoga.
Mandarin is available as an elective.
READY TO GET STARTED?
Instructional practices are based upon the latest educational and brain research regarding how students learn and synthesize information.