K-8 Program
The academic program at Tapestry Charter School is based on a multi-age classroom setting. Each classroom has a teacher and a part-time to full-time assistant teacher. There are teachers in the following super subjects: art, music, dance, physical education, library science and Spanish. A school psychologist and a school nurse are also on staff.
The multi-age classroom:
- maximizes a safe and nurturing environment, promoting the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of children
- helps students take responsibility for their behavior and learning
- helps build self-confidence
- fosters positive peer relationships
- de-emphasizes age differences and competitiveness
- encourages student leadership
- is built on continuous student progress
- involves an integrated curricular approach to instruction
- is child centered – unlocks graded curriculum boundaries and enhances opportunities for acceleration
- provides peer tutoring opportunities, expanding the learning experience for all
- provides opportunity for children to challenge themselves and others to higher level skills
- expands teacher contact time with individual students
- enables children to work at a variety of developmental levels without remediation
- reduces the need for grade level retention
- provides the basic needs of gifted and talented children
- offers opportunities for older children to model newly acquired skills for younger students – the younger students benefit from the modeling, while the older students strengthen their own understanding of those skills
- has a large age span and is more reflective of a child’s society out of school (e.g. baseball, dance class, neighborhoods, families, etc.),
- enriches and exposes children to a wider range of experience because of
- the age range of their classmates
- reduces the risk of children “falling through the cracks” because the teacher gets to know each student as an individual and generally has students for more than one year
