Science & Performing Arts Curriculum
STEM & Hydroponics Curriculum
In our STEM and Hydroponics curriculum, students will learn the engineering design process, children build their problem solving skills—skills that transfer to other disciplines, including math and science. And finally, today’s society is increasingly dependent on advanced technologies, a reality that makes engineering and technological literacy essential 21st century skills for all students. By solving engineering design challenges, our students utilize highly effective learning strategies including project-based and hands-on learning.
The success of our economy, and our students’ futures, depends on an understanding of STEM concepts. Hydroponics exposes students to STEM in multiple ways, from understanding how a sustainable system works to grow plants and calculating correct nutrients and water levels to using problem-solving skills to discover issues with plants and make changes and tweaks to help determine what could have gone wrong.
Dance
Philmore scholars interested in dance will have the opportunity to learn the beginning skills of dance while improving their techniques, poise, self-confidence and creative ability. Scholars will choreograph and dance in class presentations. Through their own dance compositions and expressions, students explore the creative process, translating ideas, thoughts, and feelings into original pieces of choreography. They also study dance forms from many cultures and time periods in cultural and historical context. The vocabulary of dance includes the basic elements of time, space, and force or energy. Students grow in understanding dance and its elements through direct experience.
Band & Music Program
At Philmore, our band and music program develops basic musicianship skills for students beginning in grade 2. Students will begin to use more articulations, perform scales and music in more difficult key signatures, demonstrate vibrato, and perform music at an intermediate level of difficulty. Ensemble skills will become more developed as students participate in full band settings. Students will describe concepts common to music and other disciplines, and will be involved in discussing various cultures, styles, composers, and historical periods.
Theatre/Drama
At Philmore Academy, every student has the chance to shine as they begin performing in front of peers, parents, and staff and friends as early as PreK. While it's fun for parents to see their little ones on stage, these performances, which are often curriculum-based, also help build confidence and allow students to develop communication and public speaking skills. The progression of performance skills begins in elementary school and continues through Middle School and culminates in High School with Theater Arts courses and participation in award-winning productions.
Media Production
At Philmore Academy, we know that Media Arts empowers students to understand the world around them. Within our Media Arts program, students learn to access, analyze, ideate, plan, create, edit, and share their media message. In the classroom, students will acquire production skills as they undergo a spiral model of both learning and producing. We believe that within their growing media arts proficiencies, they can begin to articulate what is personally meaningful and important to them, as well as their own visions for their world. As a result, they gain a sense of empowerment and equal social standing within this dynamic mediated environment.
