Seeking answers gives students purpose. Our educators pose provocations and essential questions to help students frame the skills they’ll need to develop to accomplish their goals.
By investigating topics through inquiry-driven research, students deepen their subject-area knowledge and develop thinking strategies. To practice skills and habits, they create artifacts of their learning.
Curious and imaginative, Poppy loves language and puns. Having the autonomy to choose her own books during reading workshop has helped Poppy to deepen her love for reading. During a class-wide biome project, she partnered with a classmate on a design-thinking challenge to create a device that would help clean ocean animals affected by an oil spill. Their design was influenced by Poppy’s deep empathy for animals. Whether spelling, drawing, or designing, Poppy likes to get things right the first time. This term, she’s made significant progress in reframing non-perfection as an opportunity for learning.
Kaue is passionate about history and sports, so a class-wide study on Ancient Greece and the Olympics was a perfect fit. To relate their studies to modern life, the class worked with a professional game designer to create their own games. The process required patience and compromise as students iterated toward their final artifacts. Kaue’s model combined modern-day pinball and the ancient sport of archery.
Next, students examined the bidding process that cities go through to host the modern Olympics. After researching their cities, students created scale models of their own Olympic stadiums, incorporating guidance from a design expert. Kaue suggested a few Greek myths that the class then studied in depth as the unit bridged History and English Language Arts.
Playful and reflective, Viktoria has broad interests ranging from photography to rock climbing. Viktoria served as campaign manager for a whole-class election project that incorporated Language Arts, Computer Science, Math, and Social Studies. In this role, she helped her candidate write speeches and create a tax plan that addressed local and national issues. During this project-based learning unit, Viktoria and her classmates formed small groups to analyze math problems and practice taking on different roles within team environments. AltSchool’s classrooms are flexibly designed for use in ways that best suit students’ learning preferences. Viktoria enjoys using the whiteboard to see her work unfold while working on math problems.