Core Academics Subjects

English Language Arts (ELA)

Montlake Elementary uses the Seattle Public Schools’ standard Center for the Collaborative Classroom (CCC) Collaborative Literacy curriculum for K-5 ELA instruction. This curriculum is aligned to the Common Core State Standards and also integrates social-emotional learning at every grade level. The CCC curriculum has three modules: 

1. Being A Reader (K-2) teaches foundational skills such as phonological awareness, decoding and comprehension and at the same time works to foster a love of reading. It includes whole-class and small-group instruction, independent work rotations and authentic reading experiences.
2. Being A Writer (K-5) teaches the writing process while developing intrinsic motivation for the craft of writing via read-alouds, independent practice and student-teacher conferencing, and instruction in language skills and conventions. Students are immersed in a variety of genres, including narrative, informational, and opinion/persuasive writing. 
3. Making Meaning (K-5) delivers whole-class reading and vocabulary instruction through read-aloud experiences, guided and independent strategy practice, and student-teaching conferencing to scaffold word-learning and fluency in reading. 

Mathematics

Montlake uses the Pearson enVision curriculum for k-5 math instruction. This Common Core State Standards-aligned curriculum emphasizes the development of all students as mathematicians through the development of Math Practices – the habits of mind, processes and dispositions that enable a learner to understand mathematics and to use or do mathematics with understanding. The curriculum allows educators to easily deliver differentiated instruction to all learners as they progress toward becoming fully proficient mathematicians. The curriculum is engaging and emphasizes a variety of problem-solving strategies, and includes optional home-based digital learning modules for students who wish to practice their skills further.

Science

Science at Montlake aims to be hands on and engaging. We use the Amplify Science curriculum that is aligned to the new Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS). The new standards ask students to be able to engage in science and engineering practices like design, building, and observation. It asks them to understand crosscutting concepts like cause and effect and energy and matter and how they work across all the domains in science.

It also asks students to understand key concepts in the core domains; physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences and engineering, technology and applications of science.