The Academy
Time
These self-paced courses require 30 minutes to 1 hour of the students time per course 4-5 days per week. A full course load (all courses) is 2.5 – 4.5 hours per day for levels 2-5. The beginners through level 1 only require 1-2 hours per day.
Course Work
Students are given tasks (videos, assignments, projects, discussions, group collaboration) to complete and submit. Most assignments are self paced; however, some are required to move forward.
Subjects
Currently we offer Reading, Language Arts, Science, Math, Social Studies, & Careers for elementary aged students. Courses are offered a la carte with bundle course options.
Passing
Each subject has levels which correspond with grade levels. The student will be placed based on their mastery of content in that level. They must pass skills within one level to move to another level. Students can pass at anytime. Our system is not based on semesters or school years.
Help
Our instructors and tutors are available to assist students is they get stuck. A large part of our Academy is collaboration and problem. We encourage students to use their class forum to get help.
Remedial/Advance
We meet our students where they are and provide challenges to to evaluate students to the next level. Our learning is not a one size fits all. We adjust our plans for each child’s need.
Subjects and Content
Our goal for elementary is not to match common core standards, but rather put real world expectations on our students to learn the basic building blocks of English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Careers. Our curriculum is partial derived from common core standards and then simplified for real world implementation. Each skill is placed into learning levels based on hierarchy. Students move through skills after demonstrating competency. Our focus is on creating long term knowledge, developing higher critical thinking and problem solving skills. These are crucial areas to home schooled children testing equal to or higher than traditional schooled kids (without the need to teach to the test). Let’s just really learn. Studies show when kids are engaged and investigate answers they store that knowledge more long term than crash studying facts. Studies also show that repetition is the key to retaining information. Our courses are both engaging and repetitive in nature.
Our goal for reading is to teach kids how to read any word. We do this through phonemic awareness, decoding skills, reading rhythm, vocabulary, spelling rules & comprehension. In Language Arts we focus on being effective communicators. This includes developing effective research skills along with written and spoken communication skills.
You can’t get more real world than math. Our goal is for students to have a thorough grasp of number sense, time, positions, shapes, decimals, and fractions. Also, we focus a great deal of time mastering basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division). A major component to the curriculum is developing problem solving and critical thinking skills. Brain quests here we come.
In science, we focus on gaining information about how things around us world through observation and experimentation. Our curriculum covers knowledge in Physical Science, Earth & Space Science, and Life (Human, Animal, & Plant) Science.
In Social Studies, we study Geography and History. In Geography, our focus is on exploring environments and cultural experiences based on special geographical locations. We focus on the United States, Continents, and North America. In History, our focus is important people & events in history. We like to call it Superheros of the United States. This covers important facts, inventors, women’s history, how the United State came to be, and African American History.
Careers is about self discovery and building vocational passion. We want our students to live a purpose driven life and believe that everyone can have their dream job when they prepare early. In this course student’s will be exposed to various career options and have the opportunity to explore that career.
Our reading skills is for students who are struggling with reading fluency. Students will learn decoding strategies to read faster with comprehension. This is not a sightword based program. We focus on phonemic awareness and visual phonics. These are researched based techniques that are proven to help readers. To learn more about the Reading Academy click here.