Curriculum Overview and State Standards

The Academy's curriculum is divided into three levels:

• Level 1: K-1, 2-3
• Level 2: 4-6
• Level 3: 7-8

The classical learning ideas of grammar, logic and rhetoric are incorporated in the Academy's curriculum to allow for a logical progression of learning and ideas for the students.

Specifics from the State Standards form the basis for the curriculum. Additional textbook and specialist resources are added to the curriculum in order to provide an interdisciplinary learning experience and to modify existing learning resources to fit better with the competency pedagogy.

Our curriculum is aligned with state standards and uses the Montessori Method and an integrated, interdisciplinary environment as its base.

Summary of Philosophy

Gateway Preparatory Academy believes that children are individuals who have their own unique learning style and pace. By discovering and catering to children's strengths we believe they will acquire the proper tools of learning to facilitate a well balanced education.

Utilizing a competency-based system of education allows students to be directly involved in their own education. This fosters self-discipline and a life long thirst for learning and knowledge.

The use of an interdisciplinary curriculum creates an understanding of how subjects complement and complete one another. Students are better able to integrate the skills they learn into real world contexts.

Through practical application and applied knowledge, students comprehend that they learn in order to create. The students make a difference in their own life and in the world around them.

Challenges of Time-Based Methods of Instruction

The time-based model of instruction suffers from two interrelated challenges. There is a challenge inherent in teaching students in a group with a wide range of knowledge, skills, and ability in the same subject. Also, instructional time schedules can create a situation where individual students are expected to move on to attempt more advanced material before necessary prerequisite knowledge and skills have been learned.

A standard time-based classroom of students may hypothetically have a rough distribution of student ability and knowledge along the infamous bell curve. Every educator is familiar with this concept, as are the majority of older students, especially at the University level, where grading according this Gaussian distribution is common.

This circumstance of students having a wide range of knowledge, skills, and ability in the subject being learned presents instructors and curriculum designers with a dilemma revolving around what level of material to present. If the instructor presents material at too fast of a pace, the slower and less prepared students may fall farther behind until it is difficult for them to learn any of the new material being taught. If the instructor presents material at too slow of a pace, the more advanced students may become bored and uninterested in the material being presented, many eventually losing their desire to learn in a classroom setting.

In time-based systems, instructors are typically expected to attempt to ensure that most of their students average a certain minimal level of knowledge of the subject being presented. This tends to lead to teachers presenting new material at a lower than maximum level of knowledge so as to have the highest number of students prepared for new material. Not all students learn 100% of the material presented in this manner, thus the actual average knowledge and skill level of the students involved will inevitably be lower than the level of knowledge presented.

The time-based method is that regardless of if the students individually understand the entire lesson material the teacher moves on to more advanced material in the form of the next lesson. The teacher's actions over the long term tend to be more influenced by covering all the required material in the time available, which is sometimes difficult to accomplish, instead of ensuring that all of the students are learning as much as possible.

"Unfortunately, when a student does not do well on a test there often is little time for individual assistance as the teacher must move on in order to adhere to the established time schedule." - Rick Sullivan, PhD (JHPIEGO Strategy Paper, "The Competency-Based Approach to Training", September 1995)

This phenomenon has become the subject of much controversy at a public policy level, revolving around social promotion and some students leaving school without even the basic required skills to function in society.

Common Solutions to these Challenges

Fortunately, these two challenges with time-based systems of education have been recognized and partially solved in the Utah education system and elsewhere.

One partial solution to these problems involves dividing students into smaller than class-size groups of similar ability in order to shrink the distribution of ability for their instructional unit.

Another widely-used solution is the employment of individual tutors, either parents or hired professionals, to work with failing students outside of regular school hours in order to allow the students who are falling behind to attempt to catch-up to their peers.

In contrast to failing students, many students who are more advanced than their peer group in a particular subject do not receive any special individual tutoring in that subject under common tutoring solutions.

The Gateway Preparatory Academy Solution

Most people are used to seeing time-based methods used in school. Just about everyone, however, if asked to teach something to someone they know in a home or business environment would instinctively use a competency-based approach.

When parents teach their own children how to tie their shoes or make their bed, subjects almost all parents actually teach, for best results they use a competency-based approach. The reason they use a competency-based approach is that they want to ensure their children actually learn what is being taught, as opposed to just "getting through the material", a phrase commonly used by teachers to describe time-based systems.

Ideally students will learn topics completely and at their own pace, moving on as soon as, but not sooner than when a topic has been completely learned. Future topics will build on the skills and knowledge learned in previous topics. This ideal is fulfilled by a competency-based educational model and is the ideal we will attempt to achieve at Gateway Preparatory Academy.