Our Academic Approach
Stop any student in our hallways and ask them what they’re reading–then prepare yourself for a long conversation–they’ll probably list three to five books! That’s because our approach emphasizes the joy of reading through read-alouds, hands-on activities, songs, and asking big questions to help bring the text to life. KIPP NJ elementary schools implement renowned literacy programs Fountas and Pinnell and Lexia Learning to help support reading engagement and growth. We benchmark student reading progress through the Lexia program, which allows teachers to review student progress in foundational skills for reading. Students participate in several independent and guided reading sessions each day and also have frequent opportunities to select books from classroom or school libraries.
Our math curriculum is centered around real-world problem-solving. Through the tough problems they tackle and the culture of collaboration in the classroom, our kids fall in love with the study of mathematics. We reject “I do, we do, you do” teaching where students imitate the teacher’s approach to a problem. Instead, our lessons require kids to use what they know to attack a new problem that is one step beyond what they have ever done, but still possible for kids to tackle with hard work. Our classrooms use the highly-reviewed iReady platform to track math progress and our math curriculum is derived from the Eureka Math program. We center the program around the Cognitively Guided Instruction method, which empowers students to progressively build on what they know about math to infer solutions to problems and represent their thinking in multiple ways.