Curriculum
St. Monica School offers an accelerated curriculum, preparing students to continue their education at top-ranked high schools, colleges and graduate programs. Our learning profiles span several grades to allow for individual development. Teachers embrace all types of learning styles, to ensure individual expression and growth.
Courses at St. Monica are taught in a cross-curricular fashion, with opportunities to integrate information in a variety of types of instruction. This method of teaching hones problem-solving skills, helping our students become critical and competent thinkers, able to analyze data and articulate ideas. At the basis of all instruction is a respect for the development of young Catholic Christians.
Language Arts
Language Arts is a developmental and dynamic process involving reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This process involves developmental abilities to activate background, set purpose, establish strategies, monitor comprehension, adjust strategies as needed, and reflect on the meaning one makes with a variety of verbal and nonverbal contexts.
Our Language Arts curriculum provides exposure to...
A wide variety of narrative and expository materials
Multiple purposes of oral and written communication
The interpretation and application of language
The utilization of effective communication strategies
Continuous language arts instruction includes...
Mastery of sub skills in primary grades
Teacher modeling effective communication attitudes and strategies
Knowledge and understanding of the context, purpose, and strategies
Math
We believe that Mathematics education at St. Monica School reflects strategies that develop a solid sense of numbers, as well as the competence, confidence, and communication necessary to solve everyday problems. Such strategies enhance the connection between the concrete and the abstract, in such ways as to understand and apply the concepts of number relationships.
A formal process is taught to enable students to become competent problem solvers, equipped to apply problem-solving strategies through all areas of life. This process includes but is not limited to:
Determining the operation
Working backwards
Looking for patterns
Writing equations
Setting up tables and charts
Allowing for individual differences
To incorporate the numerous teaching methods used at St. Monica School, we utilize cooperative learning, modeling, curriculum integration, small and large group work, peer tutoring, age-appropriate use of calculators and computers, mental math, estimation, manipulatives and journaling.
Social Studies
Our Social Studies Education reflects strategies that develop attitudes, knowledge, and teaming skills necessary to participate in a democratic society and an increasingly complex world. We believe that such strategies grow into an understanding of how our culture and religious heritage connects us to the present. This is achieved through proactive lessons bases on Catholic Social Teaching.
Science
By the time our students graduate, they will have developed an understanding and appreciation for science in the following ways:
Realize that all things in life are related to God's natural world
Understand that science is always evolving
Comprehend how science helps them to experience the richness and excitement of our universe
Be able to explain the differences between a scientific law and a scientific theory
Understand the Law of Conservation of Matter, Energy, and give examples of proof
Comprehend how cause and effect relationship relates to the environment
Use charts and graphs for the presentation of data
Computer Technology
Students in Senior Kindergarten through eighth grade receive weekly computer training in a state-of-the-art PC lab, complete with scanners, digital cameras, digital movie camera and other fun gadgets! Students become proficient in software programs such as Excel, Word, Power Point, Print Shop, KidPix and multiple other fun, yet educational programs.
This software is used in a variety of cross-curriculum tasks with the core-curricular teachers for reports and presentations, creating a daily application of multiple responsibilities involving some form of computer technology. Students also learn how to research projects on the Internet and apply Internet safety guidelines both at school and at home.
With multiple computers constantly in use, our lab has an "Help Your Neighbor" policy. This fosters the school attitude of community and prepares students to be team players and innovative thinkers, embracing challenges as an exciting adventure. We also regularly have older students assisting in classes with younger students to help develop cross-grade relationships and promote self-confidence in the older students.
Foreign Language
Students in our junior high grades have their choice of taking either French or Spanish. Our foreign language program has proven very successful and prepares students to excel in such programs in their high school years.
Students will learn to...
Speak, listen to, read and write the target language
Experience and/or learn about events, celebrations, and customs of the target language speaking community
Develop vocabulary and grammar to be able to express personal experiences, ideas and needs in the target language.
Provide for the development of skills which will enable students to continue to develop knowledge and proficiency in the language of choice.
Religion
Students in all grades have religion as a part of their standard curriculum. Developing the whole student, not just the academic student, is one of the focal goals of every Catholic School. Our students are bonded with the ideals of Catholicism through a wide variety of studies and activities:
Daily prayer
Liturgy and paraliturgy
Sacramental study and participation
Scriptural awareness and understanding
Knowledge of Church history
Conscience formation and moral decision making
Catholic identity
In creating this atmosphere of Christian love, students are more welcome to be individuals, feel more accepted by peers and the school community at large, and to know fundamentally that they are children of a loving and generous God, who created each of them, in love. It is our goal that this fundamental knowledge will strengthen these precious gifts we call our children, for a future in an increasingly secular and troubled world.
Special Programs
Academic Support
The Academic support teacher is responsible for collaborating with classroom teachers to identify and test students with special needs in academic areas. These needs may include an academic delay, an overall low function, gaps in fundamental skills, processing problems, motivational issues, or organizational issues. Through record review, observation, consultation, testing, or parental and/or teacher referral, the student is carefully examined. An intervention program is then designed to support the needs of the child.
Guidance
The Guidance program is based on specific philosophical principles regarding education, child development and Catholic values. All students take part in the program, goals include:
Learn positive decision making skills
Strengthen interpersonal relationships
Value themselves as unique individuals created in God's image
Respect for others
Learn effective communication skills
Be responsible for behavior and choices as well as their thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes
Create a plan to achieve personal goals
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