Academic Overview

SELA’s Curriculum

SELA has a vertically aligned, full immersion curriculum that is in alignment with MA Common Core Standards. At SELA, our students experience a vertically coherent curriculum — what students learn in one lesson, course, or grade level prepares them for the next. Each day our students are immersed in Spanish and have math, science, art, and music. What they learn one day progressively prepares them for more challenging, higher-level work. Our curriculum encourages deep learning and inspires children to create knowledge in both their native language and their target language. We are working to instill a lifelong love of learning.  

Our Learning Philosophy

Early childhood is a unique stage in a child’s life – a time of rapid brain development, unbridled enthusiasm for learning, and boundless energy for exploring and discovery. At SELA, we answer this enthusiasm for learning by giving our students a rich, challenging student-centered curriculum. At an early age, students begin to explore the world of literacy, numbers, shapes, science, and engineering while immersed in their second language of Spanish. By the age of 4, students begin reading and writing in their first and second languages and begin exposure to a third language — Mandarin.  

SELA’s Progressive Classroom Approach

Teachers design experiences for students with the idea that through experience, students construct knowledge and build skills. 

    • • Emphasis on learning by doing — hands-on projects, expeditionary learning, experiential learning
    • • Integrated curriculum focused on thematic units
    • • Strong emphasis on problem-solving critical thinking
    • • Collaborative and cooperative learning projects
    • • Highly personalized learning and focus on individual goals
    • • Selection of subject content by looking forward to asking what skills will be needed in a future society
    • • Emphasis on group work, lifelong learning, and social skills
    • • Assessment by evaluation of child’s projects and production

We are Global Citizens!

 

At SELA, we put emphasis on developing the whole child, to establish a solid and broad foundation for lifelong learning and well-being. An emotional intelligence component is built into the SELA, curriculum, which help students to identify and manage one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. Every month our students are introduced to, understand, and practice the core values that make SELA a unique and strong academic community. Students are exposed to activities, literature, and songs to support these values.