The Dayspring Way

Sources & Outcomes

A rigorous curriculum is customized for each learner at Dayspring Academy. We use the Core Knowledge Sequence to guide our teachers in understanding “What Every Child Needs to Know.” The curriculum tools we use to teach content, standards, and skills are: Core Knowledge LA and History, Eureka Math, Math XL, Ready Gen, Shurley English, Hands-on Science Kits, Wordly Wise, and Handwriting Without Tears.

We offer detailed curricular guidance and materials to schools, teachers, parents, and policy makers, to anyone who believes as we do, that every child in a diverse democracy deserves access to enabling knowledge. By providing open access to an exemplary curriculum for preschool through twelfth grade, we endeavor to:

• Create literate citizens able to contribute to a democratic society.

• Empower each child to achieve his or her greatest academic potential.

• Shrink the excellence gap between the academic achievement of American students and that of their international peers from high-performing countries.

• Shrink the fairness gap between the academic achievement of American students living in poverty and that of their economically advantaged peers.

Problem-based learning (PBL)

We use PBL to challenge students to learn through engagement in real-world problems. PBL develops both problem solving strategies and increases knowledge bases and skills by placing learners in the active role of problem-solvers confronted with a real-world situation that simulates the kind of problems they are likely to face in future life situations and in their future careers.

PBL is student-centered, which makes a fundamental shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning. The process is aimed at using the power of authentic problem solving to engage students and enhance their learning and motivation. There are several unique aspects that define the PBL approach:

Learning takes place within the contexts of authentic tasks, issues, and problems that are aligned with real-world concerns.

In a PBL course, students and instructors become co-learners, co-planners, co-producers, and co-evaluators as they design, implement, and continually refine their curricula.

The PBL approach is grounded in solid academic research on learning and on the best practices that promote it. This approach stimulates students to take responsibility for their own learning, since there are few lectures, no structured sequence of assigned readings, and so on.

PBL is unique in that it fosters collaboration among students, stresses the development of problem solving skills within the context of professional practice, promotes effective reasoning and self-directed learning, and is aimed at increasing motivation for lifelong learning.

A Focus on the Arts

We provide a rich environment where every learner is required to participate in the arts. At Dayspring Academy, the arts are not an extracurricular activity, but an integrated part of the core curriculum, with programs that include, but are not limited to: dance, drama, visual arts, band, choir, ukulele, and digital design. Research has proven that the arts enhance learning in the following manner:

• Motor Skills: Many of the motions involved in making art, such as holding a paintbrush or scribbling with a crayon, are essential to the growth of fine motor skills in young children. According to the National Institutes of Health, developmental milestones around age three should include drawing a circle and beginning to use safety scissors. Around age four, children may be able to draw a square and begin cutting straight lines with scissors. Many preschool programs emphasize the use of scissors because it develops the dexterity children will need for writing.

• Language Development: For very young children, making art, or just talking about it, provides opportunities to learn words for colors, shapes and actions. When toddlers are as young as one year old, parents can do simple activities such as crumpling up paper and calling it a “ball.” By elementary school, students can use descriptive words to discuss their own creations or talk about what feelings are elicited when they see different styles of artwork.

• Decision Making: According to a report by Americans for the Arts, art education strengthens problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. The experience of making decisions and choices in the course of creating art carries over into other parts of life. “If they are exploring and thinking and experimenting and trying new ideas, then creativity has a chance to blossom,” says MaryAnn Kohl, arts educator and author of numerous books concerning children’s art education.

• Visual Learning: Drawing, sculpting with clay, and threading beads on a string all develop visual-spatial skills, which are more important than ever. Even toddlers know how to operate a smartphone or tablet, which means that even before they can read, kids are taking in visual information. This information consists of cues that we get from pictures or three-dimensional objects from digital media, books and television.

• Improved Academic Performance: Studies show that there is a correlation between art and other achievements. A report by Americans for the Arts states that young people who participate regularly in the arts (three hours per day, three days per week for one full year) are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, to participate in a math and science fair, or to win an award for writing an essay or poem, than children who do not participate.

Musical Education

Music is a critical part of our core curriculum. Every learner is exposed to, and participates in, various forms of music education including instruments, voice, reading music, music theater, and the like. Research has proven many benefits as a result of music education.

A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test.

This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. “The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician. “Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”