Columbine Elementary provides children and parents a first- hand experience to live and learn among diversity. The diversity also brings to our school rich resources that make for a quality learning environment and include funding from Federal, state and district sources. The school’s restructuring plan calls for the alignment of these resources for cohesive K-5 program versus a collection of various separate programs.
Elements of the quality learning environment include:
- K-5th grade class size targets of 18 or less
- A balanced approach to literacy that incorporates explicit teaching of skills, structures and strategies with independent practice and opportunities to share
- Literacy instruction, intensive in both time (90 minutes to two hours per day) and in individual attention, through group sizes of 12 or less
- Spanish literacy instruction for Spanish speaking children
- Intensive English as a Second Language instruction in groups of 12 or less
- Spanish as a Second Language instruction for English speaking children
- A curriculum that focuses the development of higher order thinking through in-depth study in science and social studies topics versus a broad brush approach
- Reinforcement of reading and writing through research and in-depth study of social studies and science topics
- Instructional support for Spanish speakers for concept development in science, social studies and math from Native Language Tutors
- Talented and Gifted programming that extends and adds sophistication to social studies and science as well as accelerates instruction in math and language arts