At CELA, our educational model is built to ensure all children continually grow and are given repeated opportunities to succeed. To achieve this, we have a standards-based curriculum model defining the base academic standards children should master at each grade level preparing them for college, careers, and life. CELA has created and is using standards aligned with its mission as the foundation for our rigorous curriculum design. The standards are designed as building blocks toward the higher order thinking skills that we implement, in order to help our students solve complex problems. Having a standards-based curriculum provides us the ability to celebrate each student’s progress over time and to individualize instruction to ensure every child is spending time learning content appropriate for their own learning progression until they reach mastery.

With these standards in place, we have selected educational resources (including textbooks) for our teachers to use as tools to lead toward learning mastery of these standards. Academic excellence is one of CELA’s three pillars. Therefore, all curricular materials selected and used in the school will be of the highest quality and will be constantly evaluated, reviewed and improved.
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We will continually measure CELA’s and each student’s performance in all areas assessing the schools performance and each students performance and making the necessary adjustments individually and school wide to maximize individual and school wide growth allowing CELA to excel.
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The Christian Values/Leadership Development Program is a Biblically-based program that seeks to train students and faculty to live Christ-centered, fulfilling and virtuous lives as leaders in all walks of life. We believe an individual’s character is developed through the understanding of the Christian values given to the world through God and Christ and then comprehending what it means to live a life that daily demonstrates the individual’s acceptance and commitment to these values in everything they do.

Our curriculum is based on the values found in the teachings of God and Jesus and revealed to us in the Bible. At CELA, all members of the CELA family, including students, parents, and faculty, agree with our Statement of Faith and therefore are Christians. We are teaching that “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1).

Because of our faith in God who is all-knowing and unlimited, we believe the values He teaches us are the key values we should live by. At CELA, we take these Biblically-based beliefs and understandings and add to them the examples of people who are living or who have lived their lives exemplifying these values. We study to uncover the impact these examples have had on the world. Children are taught how to integrate these values into their every-day behavior and practice them in a culture where it is revered to do so.

The families are brought into this culture through required assignments, working with their children on their lessons and hopefully broadening the span of influence and providing the parents a platform to influence the children in a positive manner. This we believe will have a profound and long-lasting impact on the CELA family and the world.

Our Christian Values curriculum plays an integral part in our Leadership Development Program as we believe it is imperative to have a great value system in order to be a great leader. Also imperative to developing confident leaders are the continual opportunities we give our students to practice and become comfortable in leadership positions. Our students take part in these roles on a daily basis, both in their classroom and through school-wide programs such as student-led announcements, prayers, chapel programs, concerts, etc. These continual, rotating leadership opportunities along with intentional public speaking and speech classes, forensics competitions, etc., are giving our students the confidence they will need to become great Christian leaders for our future.
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In order to help students identify themselves as readers and writers, CELA provides an integrated literacy program by Pearson, the world’s learning company, based on authentic fiction and nonfiction texts. Students read, write and explore content, actively engaging in daily literacy experiences. Students are immersed in learning that promotes higher achievement and develops the competencies needed for college and career readiness. Our instructional approach fosters the reciprocity of reading and writing. This critical approach will help your child understand the inter-dependency between reading and writing and use that connection to become a lifelong learner and communicator.

Students will:

• Close read in order to develop critical thinking skills, identify ideas and key details, understand structure, and synthesize information across texts.
• Dig deep, think hard, and always cite evidence from the text they are reading as proof of their ideas.
• Take a constructive approach to learning vocabulary with words taught in clusters and not in isolation, with a focus on words that are critical to understanding the text.
• Participate in daily integrated writing instruction and practice in order to help them focus on organizing their thoughts, learning content, connecting ideas about the text, and deepening understanding.
• Write in the modes of argumentative, informative, narrative, and opinion, and practice the writing process.

The online component of this curriculum tracks individual student progress and provides multimedia resources to build students’ interest in any given topic. Students have the capability to complete and turn in assignments electronically and teachers are able to customize the online content to fit the different needs of their students.
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The goal of ReadyGEN is to build strong readers and writers through a lesson structure that includes coherent text sets and routine based instruction. Students practice, build motivation, and improve their reading stamina with relevant fiction and nonfiction texts. Your child’s teacher will use the texts to model the writing process as students write daily. There are four priorities of this curriculum. The first priority is to engage children with high quality complex texts that are worth reading. These texts are genre/age appropriate, elevate vocabulary to initiate further learning, and are well written. A second priority is providing students experience with text-based questions that require students to interact with the reading in order to support their answers with textual evidence. Writing is our third priority. Through this curriculum students are taught to analyze and synthesize sources, using that experience to write their own original piece. Finally, the fourth priority is a continual focus on foundational reading and writing during all instruction. If you would like to learn more please go to https://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS2eUe.
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Just as each of our middle school students are growing as students and going through a season of transition, our English curriculum builds on skills students learned through their elementary grade levels and challenges them to be well prepared for their freshman year of high school. Each unit of study is driven by an essential question, such as “What can generations learn from each other?” which serves as a theme tying the reading and writing together. Throughout the lessons, students build skills in analyzing different text types, language conventions, research practices, vocabulary, and various writing modes. Each unit has corresponding novel choices that the students can choose to read and study to further apply the concepts they have learned in the lessons. MyPerspectives encourages social collaboration as well as student ownership of learning through goal setting, choice, and reflection. To learn more about MyPerspectives please go to https://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS2rBh.
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Through an intricate process of studying one sentence per week, students at CELA, alongside their mentor teachers, learn to analyze how the elements of a sentence work together to shape the message of a writer. Because each day of the week has its own designated purpose, students consistently analyze different components/structures of the weekly sentence on its designated day. This allows our students to mindfully think about how each part of a sentence works individually first, and then they can work to explain how all of the parts work together. Through this process of breaking down a sentence to then build it back up again, students learn how to use the English language to communicate through writing or speaking most effectively, thus pushing their overall understanding of the English language to new levels. Students learn that through consistent grammar practice their writing skills become more analytical and process-oriented, thus elevating their word choice, sentence structure and overall delivery of their intended message on paper.
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Spelling Connections provides all students the missing piece to the literacy puzzle: explicit spelling instruction and word work. With Spelling Connections, students will retain, internalize, and transfer valuable spelling knowledge for improved results in all areas of literacy-in the classroom and beyond. This spelling curriculum provides complete, meaningful instruction and practice including differentiated word sorts to promote higher-level skill development in thinking, phonics/vocabulary, reading, and writing. It also includes diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments to monitor progress. Spelling Connections integrates technology tools for engaging, relevant spelling instruction and practice that all students will enjoy.
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Word Wisdom is a research-based vocabulary program that teaches students to use vocabulary strategies in order to build upon their growing comprehension and fluency skills. Through the introduction of 30 Tier Two academic words each unit, which align to a wide variety of domains, students move through the four-week units in the same way each week. During week one, students read passages which allow them to study and learn the meanings of new words by using context clues. In week two, students focus on learning the words’ Latin and Greek roots. In week three, students use the words while fine-tuning their reference skills. By week four, students are ready to review and are assessed on the words of the unit. Focusing on the following three steps of unlocking the meaning, processing the meaning and applying the meaning, this vocabulary program’s greatest feature is that words are learned in context and while learning them, students also learn the skills to attack other new words they encounter in the future. In addition to learning the words’ meanings, CELA students are responsible for mastering the spelling of the unit’s words as well.
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Vocabu-Lit is a unique, research-based vocabulary program that introduces 10 new weekly words to students through the reading of classic and contemporary literary passages written by well-known multicultural authors. Passages range from excerpts from novels to speeches made by United States Presidents. In order to read these high-level fiction and nonfiction passages, students must use context clues to initially understand the words’ meanings, as they often differ from the more known primary definition. In order to master each word’s definition and spelling, students work on six varied and complex activities each week, like solving analogy problems, comparing synonyms and antonyms, using Greek and Latin roots and using words in different contexts. With an extra online component through Quizlet, students happily use digital flashcards and motivating word games to prepare for their weekly quizzes. Every five weeks, students have a week of review in order to prepare for their summative assessment.
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Elementary students are actively engaging in handwriting and typing instruction through Zaner-Bloser’s paired programs entitled, Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) and Keyboarding Without Tears (KWT). These programs address the necessary posture, grip, paper positioning, and readiness to sequentially learn to print and write in cursive, as well as advance from letter recognition on the keyboard, to typing with speed and accuracy. Knowing that students become engaged through active learning, as well as stimulating their senses, CELA has chosen to use these programs because they foster just these learning techniques. In addition, using the two programs in conjunction with each other allows for the lesson delivery to build on a shared vocabulary and structure, thus creating alignment for students to learn and practice both skills as they advance from grade level to grade level.
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Hands-on and inquiry driven, Math Expressions teaches students how to represent solutions and explain their answers. This approach helps develop problem-solving and reasoning skills. Math Expressions combines elements of standards-based instruction with the best traditional approaches. Through drawings, conceptual language, and real-world examples, it helps students make sense of mathematics. NSF (National Science Foundation) funded and research-based, Math Expressions is proven to be effective in raising student achievement, and puts CELA students on the path to becoming lifelong learners. There is also a wealth of resources for parents: https://www.eduplace.com/parents/hmm/.

Big Ideas Math® is dedicated to the balanced approach to instruction. Activities and explorations involve student-directed discovery learning, allowing students to develop conceptual understanding. The discovery learning is followed by teacher-directed instruction giving students the opportunity to utilize clear, precise mathematics language and structure. The Big Ideas Math program at CELA utilizes a research-based, balanced instructional approach that includes CELA’s dynamic technology which supports and enhances the multiple pathways available from 6th grade mathematics through the possibility of high school Algebra 2.
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TCI’s Science Alive! is an engaging and student-centered K-5 curriculum aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards. Science Alive! includes hands-on investigations, collaborative engineering design challenges and online text, simulations, and interactive presentations. This comprehensive program blends rich curriculum with interactive and engaging STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) experiences that develop strong scientific knowledge while sparking students’ natural curiosity and creativity.
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Inspire Science is built with the proven 5E framework that provides an in-depth, collaborative, evidence-based, and project-based learning experience. The 5E model is an inquiry-based instructional method that allows students to explore, investigate and come to conclusions supported by evidence. The 5-stage flow of instruction: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate model spans out over a period of time. The curriculum bridges research and practice by providing tools and strategies to engage students in experiences that lead to deeper understanding of the natural and designed worlds that God has created. Science is a creative and analytic enterprise, made active by our human capacity to think. Here at CELA, we allow students to be exposed to a variety of scientific theories so that they can think about how they relate to what is known, test their ideas in logical ways, and generate explanations that integrate the new information into understanding of the natural and designed worlds as CREATED by God!

Christian Engineers apply that understanding to solve real-world problems. Thus, the scientific enterprise is both what we know (content knowledge) and how we come to know it (science practices – with the lens of Christianity). Science is a discovery activity, a process for producing new knowledge based upon and defended by our Christian faith!
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TCI’s Social Studies Alive! is an interactive, engaging, and collaborative curriculum covering world and American history, geography, civics, and economics. Students will not just read textbooks and answer questions, but they will discover information and apply their newfound knowledge in a variety of ways! They will feel the emotions of historical figures, reason through problems and debate complex issues. Through meaningful activities and projects, students will interact in pairs and groups so they are engaged in their own learning and practicing leadership skills. This method raises student achievement and understanding, while fostering students’ passion for understanding the Christianity of our Founding Fathers.
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