Design Principles

At their foundation, these design principles are intended to advance youth learning and development through careful considerations of:

Positive Developmental Relationships
Environments Filled With Safety and Belonging
Rich Learning Experiences and Knowledge Development
Development of Skills, Habits, and Mindsets

Read on to find out more about what makes Ash Grove Academy different.

Learners can think critically and creatively to solve complex problems

Student voice is central to the learning community
Learning is a social, emotional, cognitive, and academic endeavor
Restorative practices are based on the community and relationships

In Practice

Inquiry and problem-based learning provide rich, relevant tasks that are culturally connected and collaboratively pursued to build critical thinking, communication, and interpersonal skills.

Students' interests direct units of study with opportunities for self-directed work and play within a Universal Design for Learning framework.

Skill, habit, and mindset development support engaged, productive, and effective learners in ways that increase transfer to new situations.

Skill building is integrated within learning experiences to meet the social, emotional, and academic needs of each student in addition to morning meetings, conflict resolution circles, and curricula with embedded SEL components.

Trauma-informed restorative practices foster inclusive learning through which all students feel valued and experience stronger academic, social, and emotional outcomes.

Restorative routines and settings support reflection to build life skills through community circles, places where students can defuse and reflect, and instruction and guidance for explicit conflict resolution.

Relationships can both buffer the impact of stress and provide a pathway to motivation, self-efficacy, learning, and further growth.

Consistent routines in small learning communities allow students to be well known and well supported. Students participate in shared decision-making and collaborate in frequent communication with their families.

Principle

Classroom Community

Curriculum & Instruction

Spiraled exposure to state standards of learning through inquiry-based experiences
Executive function and metacognition are core components of all learning

In Practice

Students learn best when they are engaged in authentic activities and collaboratively working with peers to deepen their understanding and transfer knowledge and skills to new contexts and problems.

Curriculum and program offerings use flexible scaffolding and supports to leverage learners’ strengths to address areas for growth and in reaching common goals.

Student voice and autonomy is integral to true engagement, collaboration, and deep learning.

Tools such as learning surveys, student reflections, observation protocols, and formative assessments are used for learning about students’ experiences, interests, strengths, and readiness to foster authentic learning experiences

Engaged and effective learners develop content-specific knowledge alongside cognitive, emotional, and social skills.

Executive function, growth mindset, social awareness, perseverance, and metacognition are integrated across curriculum and in all settings.

Transferable learning engages higher order skills of analysis, synthesis, critical thinking, and problem-solving and allows knowledge to be understood deeply enough to be recalled and used for other purposes in novel situations.

For example, students write and illustrate books, rather than complete fill-in-the-blank worksheets and conduct science investigations, rather
than memorize disconnected facts. Academic subjects are fully integrated.

Inquiry-based learning enables students to take an active role in building knowledge and “learning to learn” by managing their own learning process.

Inquiry may take place in a single
day’s lesson or a long-term project. It centers hands on exploration and includes explicit instruction at critical junctures to support authentic learning.

Principle

Assessments are part of the instructional process.
There are multiple ways to understand and show understanding.

In Practice

Students are empowered to solve authentic problems with formal and informal feedback from peers and adults.

Performance assessments and rubrics focused on higher-order thinking skills structure the teaching, tasks, feedback, and metacognitive reflections that guide learning.

While development generally progresses in somewhat predictable stages, children learn and acquire skills at different rates and in different ways.

Educators personalize supports for all individuals using formative assessments and learning progressions to monitor growth and provide actionable guidance.

Strong relationships between the school and the family increases academic outcomes.

Student-led conferences help teachers learn from parents about their children, review student progress and set goals, and provide an opportunity for parents to see and hear, in their child’s own words, what they are learning.

Performance assessments provide multiple entry points for diverse learners to access content and encourage higher-order thinking, evaluation, synthesis, and deductive and inductive reasoning for all.

Students apply their knowledge and skills in creating projects, products, presentations, and/or demonstrations. These may be assembled and communicated through student portfolios or the systematic collection of student work samples, records of observation, scored papers or products, and other artifacts collected over time to demonstrate growth and achievement.

Principle

Assessment