Curriculum

Central to teaching and learning at Mission Hill School is an integrated curriculum that attends to the academic, intellectual, artistic, social, emotional, and civic growth of each student. The school-wide themes are woven into social studies, literacy, science and the arts. While mathematics is taught as a discrete content area, it too may connect to thematic studies through activities such as graphing data collection or the study of Ancient Greek mathematicians. Students study thematic topics over a four-year rotation. Each student experiences the full range of 12 themes from Kindergarten through third grade, and then a second time, from fourth through seventh grades.

Middle School students follow the schoolwide curriculum to a lesser degree as they prepare for their portfolio requirements necessary for graduation. The reflective process embedded in portfolio work at each grade level further helps students to see connections between topics, disciplines, and their own learning. Students develop competency in making choices and articulating their reasons for those choices, culminating in the portfolio presentation as a critical graduation requirement.

It is the school’s belief that students learn best when engaged in meaningful topics where the focus is on depth as opposed to breadth. The idea is that a student will learn some things well, rather than a great many things with little understanding.