Our Curriculum
3K and Pre-K
The Creative Curriculum is an innovative, comprehensive educational framework designed to foster children's development through creative and interactive learning experiences. This curriculum emphasizes the importance of hands-on, project-based activities that encourage exploration, discovery, and critical thinking. It integrates a variety of subjects, including language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts, to provide a well-rounded education that meets the diverse needs of students.
In recent years, New York City public schools have adopted the Creative Curriculum to enhance the educational experiences of their students. The adoption process involved extensive training for educators to ensure they are well-equipped to implement the curriculum effectively. This initiative aims to create a more engaging and dynamic learning environment that can cater to the individual interests and learning styles of students.
Key details about learning with the Creative Curriculum in NYC public schools include:
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Child-Centered Approach: The curriculum is designed to be flexible, allowing teachers to tailor lessons to the unique needs and interests of their students. This approach promotes a love for learning and encourages students to take an active role in their education.
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Project-Based Learning: Students engage in in-depth projects that require them to apply various skills and knowledge. These projects often involve real-world problems and scenarios, helping students make meaningful connections between their learning and everyday life.
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Integration of Subjects: The curriculum seamlessly integrates different subjects, ensuring that students receive a holistic education. For example, a project on plants might include reading books about plants (language arts), measuring plant growth (mathematics), studying plant biology (science), and understanding the role of plants in different cultures (social studies).
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Assessment and Feedback: Ongoing assessment is a crucial component of the Creative Curriculum. Teachers use a variety of assessment tools to monitor student progress and provide timely feedback, helping students stay on track and achieve their learning goals.
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Professional Development: NYC public schools have invested in professional development for teachers to ensure they can effectively implement the Creative Curriculum. This includes workshops, training sessions, and collaborative planning time.
By adopting the Creative Curriculum, NYC public schools aim to provide a more engaging, inclusive, and effective education that prepares students for success in the 21st century.
ELA/Reading Grades K-2
Wilson Language Training's Fundations (Grades K-2)
- Emphasizes systematic phonics and study of word structure based on the principles of the Wilson Reading System
- Teaches skills explicitly and systematically in daily 30-minute lessons (print knowledge, alphabetic awareness, phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and spelling)
- Instruction is cumulative and scaffolds presented skills
- Includes both decodable reading passages for students to practice with as well as manipulatives
- Utilizes assessments to monitor students throughout the program and offers direction for staff to meet individual student needs and provide targeted small-group interventions
- Provides multiple opportunities for skills application through extensive practice
- Offers a Home Support Packet to encourage parental involvement
Developed in 2003 by Dr Michael Heggerty, the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is a systematic 35 week program of daily lesson plans that provide a high level of explicit modelling and student engagement. Each level of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum focuses on eight phonemic awareness skills, along with two additional activities to develop letter and sound recognition, and language awareness.
The Heggerty Curriculum includes explicit instruction in the following phonological and phonemic awareness skills:
- Rhyming
- Onset Fluency
- Blending
- Isolating final and medial phonemes (sounds)
- Segmenting
- Adding Phonemes
- Deleting Phonemes
- Substituting Phonemes
All lessons are designed for a classroom setting, only take 10-12 minutes, and are very easy to implement. The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is also designed to work alongside existing structured synthetic phonics programs and is a great way to build up the phonological skills of our early readers.
- HMH Into Reading:
We selected HMH Into Reading following a formal review in 2021-22. Educators and school leaders assessed curriculum options based on the quality of texts in terms of volume, range, knowledge building, assessment, usability, and accessibility for a diverse student population.
HMH Into Reading underwent an implementation study conducted by Cobblestone Applied Research & Evaluation, Inc., a third-party research firm. They collected and analyzed data from one suburban school district during the 2019-20 school year, revealing significant growth and student achievement across all participating grades, regardless of gender, ethnicity, special education status, English Language Learner status, or Gifted/Talented status. Note: this study was terminated in March 2020 due to the pandemic.
What Is Literacy?
Literacy is the ability to read, write, speak and listen effectively. These skills enable students to express themselves clearly, listen to others, gain knowledge and build an understanding of the world around us. While each school selects its own literacy curriculum, there are common features in every New York City Public School classroom. These include books that help student apply new reading skills in context and units of study that teachers use for reading and writing instruction.
Schools have a focused, intentional sequence of lessons for both reading and writing for the school year so that the instruction is planned thoughtfully. Lessons include:
- listening
- speaking
- reading and writing
- opportunities for thinking
- rich discussion with peers in pairs or in small groups
Teachers model good questioning and encourage students to ask questions about what they read and learn. Students receive instruction on specific strategies to help them read difficult text, and practice using those strategies on a variety of reading passages, both fiction and nonfiction. These texts are selected to meaningfully reflect the rich cultural and ethnic diversity in our schools. There are also opportunities for daily independent reading and writing guided by the classroom teacher, and school libraries offer opportunities for further inquiry and research projects. Finally, examples of student work applying what they have learned to their research, analysis, and writing are displayed in classrooms and hallways so everyone can learn from each other's efforts.
Some of the additional features you can expect to see in your child’s school are the following:
In Elementary Grades
- A strong early reading and writing program in kindergarten, first, and second grade that includes instruction in the five fundamentals of reading:
- Phonics: relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language.
- Phonemic awareness: the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds.
- Vocabulary: the meaning or definition of words.
- Fluency: the ability to read accurately with reasonable speed and expression.
- Comprehension: the ability to understand and interpret what is read.
- A literacy program that has a predictable format so that students understand the goal of each lesson
- Teachers leading daily read-alouds using high-quality, culturally diverse, age-appropriate books
- Writing instruction that includes daily opportunities to practice skills such as handwriting, word choice, sentence structure, and punctuation in varied genres
- Classrooms with libraries offering a wide range of grade-appropriate books across many topics and reading levels
- A reading coach who supports early reading acquisition in kindergarten, first, and second grade
- Extra support in focused, small group settings for students who are struggling in reading and writing
Discover the Citywide Digital Library on SORA
Use your NYC Public School credentials to access the Citywide Digital Library(Open external link) on Sora.
The Citywide Digital Library(Open external link) provides the quickest and easiest way to read digital books. NYC students can log in using their school credentials and instantly access thousands of ebooks and audiobooks on virtually any device in multiple languages. The Citywide Digital Library is available 24/7 - all you need to get started is an internet connection and your school login. Begin your next reading adventure with just a tap.
NYC Reads
Beginning in the 2023–24 school year, we will be launching an initiative called NYC Reads. The goal is to ensure that all New York City students become strong readers, which is the single most important skill required for educational, career, and lifetime success. Based on extensive research, NYC Reads will ensure that pre-K and elementary school students receive the most effective reading instruction materials and methods.
Phasing in over two years, NYC Reads will require all early childhood education classrooms to adopt a single, uniform curriculum called The Creative Curriculum, while K-5 schools will choose one of three pre-approved, phonics-based reading curricula that have proven to be effective. The new literacy program will be implemented in 15 community school districts in 2023-24, with all districts adopting it by the following school year.
About the Curricula
A curriculum is how standards, or learning goals, for every grade and subject are translated into day-to-day activities. As part of the NYC Reads initiative, all schools will implement one of three comprehensive evidence-based curricula for reading instruction that includes grounding in phonics.
Math Grades K-5
At-Risk Interventions
Acadience Reading helps teachers identify children at risk for reading difficulties and determine the skills to target for instructional support
- provides universal screening
- detects when students need extra support
- is sensitive to effects of intervention
- supports the RtI/Multi-tiered model
Great Leaps
Great Leaps is a comprehensive intervention program for reading and language that is designed and proven to generate significant and lasting gains.
Great Leaps reading takes less than ten minutes a day at least 3 times per week for substantive improvement. Great Leaps math takes only five minutes a day at least 3 times per week for optimum growth.
Science
We are proud to have a vibrant, project based learning science curriculum. We also have a STEM lab for all students including makerspace materials, 3D Printers, and robotics. We are a proud CS4ALL school. As part of the District 24 STEM Diversity Grant, we have an ICT class on each grade with a STEM focus. Our trained teachers create a project based culture based on real world problem solving.
Amplify Science:
Amplify Science is a K–8 science curriculum that blends hands-on investigations, literacy-rich activities, and interactive digital tools to empower students to think, read, write, and argue like real scientists and engineers.
STEM is an abbreviation for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Students can learn about STEM both inside and outside the classroom at all grade levels (PreK-12). STEM can also incorporate the arts—then it becomes STEAM. History and literacy may also be included.
STEM education engages students in asking questions and solve problems related to the world around them. Using the engineering-design process, students identify problems, design possible solutions, and test and evaluate those solutions. This process, combined with the study of math and science, helps students to find connections that make science, math, and technology relevant to their lives.
STEM can include a variety of courses that combine subjects such as: computer science; robotics; sustainability and green construction; environmental studies; marine science; urban transportation; financial literacy; urban gardening and farming; communications; health and wellness; and so much more.
CS4ALL:
Computer science is the study of the capabilities and limitations of computers. Computational literacy is the ability to understand how CS can be applied in all walks of life. New York City public school students develop computational literacy through creative computing
Social Studies
he NYCDOE K-8: Passport to Social Studies program is a comprehensive instructional resource that integrates the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) and the New York State K-8 Social Studies Framework to support strong social studies teaching and learning.
An effective social studies program allows students to make sense of the world in which they live, make connections between major ideas and their own lives, and see themselves as active members of a global community. While knowledge of content is very important, it is equally important to engage our students in historical thinking. This program challenges students to think like historians and encourages them to raise questions, think critically, consider many perspectives, and gather evidence in support of their interpretations through the practice of chronological processing, decision-making, and historical research and analysis. These real-world skills will serve students well as participating citizens of a democracy.
Designed to support The New York City K-8 Social Studies Scope & Sequence, each yearly course of study is organized around newly developed units of study, each guided by essential questions. Teachers can use the units of study to plan coherent instruction that considers relevant skills, practices, and knowledge objectives for deep historical understanding.
The units of study were developed with and for classroom teachers by the Social Studies Department as part of the Office of Curriculum, Instruction & Professional Learning. Members of the Social Studies Department and other staff worked with teachers to design the activities and lesson plans provided within each unit guide. The unit guides offer a sequence of instruction that can be adapted and customized to meet individual students’ needs and were structured to support high quality social studies instruction that will engage students in historical thinking and disciplinary literacy. The units of study leverage the rich diversity and resources our city has to offer to enhance robust and rigorous social studies instruction. The development of each unit was informed by and integrated with the following documents and perspectives: New York State K-12 Social Studies Framework, the Common Core Learning Standards in English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Understanding by Design, and Reading Like a Historian (Stanford History Education Group).
NYCDOE K-8: Passport to Social Studies include units of study as well as a variety of documents, trade books, and primary sources as part of the classroom package to support rigorous instruction and student inquiry. These “text sets” should be added to and change and grow over time. Just as knowledge and historical scholarship is not static, our resources should not be static either. As new information, discoveries or interpretations are published they can be added to the existing units of study. Lastly, teachers know their students best and should also consider student needs when adding additional print or non-print materials.
Physical Education