E.L. Haynes' academic curriculum is founded in best practices from the highest-performing schools across the country. Our curriculum is designed to ensure that every student reaches high levels of academic achievement. The school expects students to:

• Meet rigorous expectations.

• Produce authentic, interesting work.

• Actively engage with real-life problems and questions.

• Become passionate and skillful life-long readers and writers.

• Develop mathematical and scientific thinking, problem solving and inquiry skills.

• Build strong interpersonal, communication and collaborative skills.

Below is a general description of E.L. Haynes' academic curriculum with resources for all grade levels. To see information more specific to your own student, please select their grade level from the menu on the left.

Literacy 
Balanced literacy is a framework for instruction built on the premise that all children will learn to read and write when given a wide variety of real-life experiences appropriate to their current skill level.  In reading and writing workshop, students are given daily opportunities to practice reading and writing with varying levels of support and scaffolding through small group and individualized instruction.  Through this framework, students replicate the authentic reading and writing experiences they will continue to develop throughout life.

To encourage students to read more, E.L. Haynes has initiated a challenge for the 2010/2011 school year:

At Kansas Avenue, the goal is for students to read 3 MILLION MINUTES by June.

At Georgia Avenue, the goal is for students to read 3 MILLION PAGES by June.

Literacy

ELH Benchmarks for Independent Reading

List of Leveled Books (Level J and above)

Readers and Writers Workshop

More Information About Writer's Workshop

Math
The core curricular resource at every grade level is the Everyday Math curriculum. Everyday Math is a challenging, standards-based, “spiraling” curriculum. Students learn concepts and skills from all mathematical strands, as well as the connections between these concepts, through multiple exposures to topics and frequent opportunities to review and practice. When necessary, we supplement the Everyday Math curriculum to meet all DC standards.

Everyday Math Parent Section

Math/Science

Science
As a math and science focused school, the development of scientific thinking is an important goal at E.L. Haynes. Students in all grade levels study science throughout the year, developing both scientific content knowledge and an understanding of scientific processes and communication. The FOSS (Full Option Science System) science units are the basis for much of our science instruction. FOSS is an inquiry-based program that provides students with hands-on opportunities to engage in authentic scientific inquiry that require increasingly complex cognitive skills. Each grade addresses science standards through study of the FOSS science units.

FOSS Science Module's Parents Corner

Social Studies
Good social studies instruction not only addresses standards but also challenges students to discuss, think and write about important events, people, places and concepts that interest them. For this reason, at E.L. Haynes social studies instruction is integrated into the balanced literacy framework. Through projects, shared reading, read-alouds, and topic-specific independent reading and writing, students develop social studies knowledge and skills as they develop as readers and writers.

Learning Expeditions
At least once a year each class at E.L. Haynes embarks on a learning expedition in order to tackle science and social studies concepts or topics more deeply. Expeditions are long-term investigations of important real-life problems and questions. They include individual and group projects, field studies, and performances and presentations of high-quality student work.