Curriculum Enhancements

 

SJHA Pre-K is very excited to introduce the Frog Street Curriculum. This engaging interactive curriculum program celebrates the joy of learning while children travel down the road to success. Some of the learning activities will be socialization and communication skills. Academic skills will focus on Math, Phonics, Early Literacy, and Religion. We will have Creative Arts, Music and Movement activities. Children will participate in group projects, discussions, and many learning games.

We will have practice activities in centers. We also learn the alphabet, the sounds, and the numbers through various types of experiences and the Letter People Preschool Program. Most importantly the children will learn to socialize and be a part of the group. They will learn to take turns, and share and work cooperatively together.

 

As educators we are dedicated to the continued exploration of innovative teaching modalities to help inform our pedagogy in the humanities and literacy curricular. Students are offered the opportunity to read, write and explore various genres of literature to foster a love of reading and draw connections between subject and content areas. Recognizing that students in grades K to 3 are learning to read while students in grades 4 and above are reading to learn, faculty participate in a variety of professional development opportunities that promote phonetic awareness and continue to develop reading and writing across the curricula. These programs will aid in providing differentiated instruction for students at all levels of learning.

 

 

SJHA believes it is essential to provide our students with social and emotional learning opportunities for their overall well-being and mental health. At Hill, we have dedicated a Catapult counselor and ADAP counselor who work with our students at varying grade levels on a range of social and emotional learning topics including mindfulness, academic skills for success, and so on. 

Opportunities for facilitated discussion and reflection with a trained counselor about positive attitudes and having a growth mindset will shift the way students think in the long term. It gives them the tools to better understand, manage, and communicate their emotions and encourages them to care about themselves and the world around them.

 

You can read more on Social Emotional Learning at SJHA Elementary School here.

You can read more on Educational Support at SJHA Elementary School here.

 

 

SJHA's Junior High Writers' Workshop is designed to assist students become confident and capable writers. During the Writers' Workshop, they have the opportunity to work independently and with their classmates. Students actively engage in the writing process, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing their work. With Mr. O'Keefe, the Writers’ Workshop is focused on developing active critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Students will learn the importance of annotating, close reading, and summarizing to enhance their ability to read and break down complex information. They will also apply the knowledge and skills they acquire through this process to their own writing.

Students will prepare both fiction and nonfiction pieces, completing a variety of assignments from creative writing to research papers. Our focus will be on sensory details, expansion of vocabulary, transition words and phrases, reinforcement of English conventions, and clear organization of ideas and arguments.

Our Hill students have so many wonderful ideas, and we hope that this class will help them to express these ideas more effectively in their writing. Writers’ Workshop grades are part of a student's English Language Arts (ELA) grade.

SJHA offers a Spanish Language course for all Pre-K 4 to 5th Grade students and welcomed our new Spanish teacher Ms. Jennifer Jimenez. Veteran teacher Mrs. Nichole Edelman continues to teach Spanish three times a week to grades 6 through 8. Learning another language at an early age gives children so many great benefits! Research shows that learning a second language boosts problem solving, critical thinking, listening skills and overall academic development. It also nurtures their curiosity.