Humanities

Ross’s humanities curriculum is rooted in real-world experiences, rich complex texts, and student voice. The books we read, conversations we have, and writing we publish incorporate each student’s interest and identity (“Embraced for who you are…”) and push each student to grow as a citizen, activist, and life-long learner (“Empowered to be even more!”).

We believe that “youngsters deserve to write for real, to write the kinds of texts they see in the world – nonfiction chapter books, persuasive letters, stories, lab reports, reviews, poems – and to write for an audience of readers, not just for the teacher’s red pen”   (Lucy Calkins, Guide to the Writing Workshop).  Across all grades at Ross, students spend a significant amount of time each day generating new writing, revising, editing, and publishing. Students write across the genres: narrative, informational, and persuasive texts.  Given the demands of the Common Core State Standards, we focus on evidence-based talking and writing about the complex texts we read.  Ross students love to write and write about what they love!

In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough writes, “when kids believe they can change their intelligence, they actually do better. They work harder.”  At Ross we invite students across all grade levels to participate in goal-setting and a growth mindset that fosters effort.   This goal-setting work begins with the Hopes and Dreams each child sets during the first six weeks of school, and culminates in our Spring Student-Led Conference Day. Our reading instruction ensures that students are constantly growing as readers including their ability to choose books, talk and write about books, read books across genres, show independence and stamina, and more.  Reading levels are not the only measure of student growth.  Because of this, we do not share reading levels with students. Instead, we want our readers to focus on their development of fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and more.