Our Curriculum

List of 5 items.

• Teaching the Processes of Learning

  Our commitment to process remains paramount in everything we do. Teachers plan their units to meet the needs, capabilities, and interests of a diverse student body. Our classrooms and library are filled with images, stories, and artifacts representing a broad range of experiences. The content that we teach encourages students to engage in critical exploration of themselves, others, and the wider world in which we live. Each unit has its own specific content objectives, but all units share certain fundamental characteristics. They teach the processes of learning: posing questions, designing investigations, researching primary and secondary sources, testing and revising conclusions, and presenting to an audience. They teach children to think.

• In the Classroom

  Our Preprimary classrooms use the Montessori model to develop their curriculum. In the Primary and Middle School divisions, we are on a two-year cycle with art, language arts, library, physical education, science, and social studies being taught in mixed-grade groupings. Beginning in first grade, math and music are taught at grade level. Our world language program is on a four-year cycle studying a different cultural unit each year.
  
  

  Resources may include readings, photographs, guest speakers, films, artifacts, field trips, interviews, relevant software, and more. Experiments, cooking, arts, construction, building models, simulations, slide shows, dramatizations, reports, memory books, reflective journals, and role-plays are examples of activities and projects that might be included.

  
  

  Unit work often culminates with in-depth student projects and celebrations that share learning with family and friends.

• Holistic Student Support

  Ancona provides both academic and social/emotional services to students in all grade levels. The Student Support Team (SST) actively works with students, teachers, parents, and outside specialists to create a support system that is student-centered and holistic. The Ancona community can seek advice from the SST for additional support both inside and outside of school. As a partner with Chicago Public Schools, we are able to collaborate and advocate for families and students while going through the process of creating a 504 plan or an Individualized Education Program (IEP). We work with families using a team-based approach in order to determine the type of assistance a student may need.

• Student-Centered Assessment

  In Ancona’s student-centered classrooms, assessment of student learning is a continuous process for both teachers and students. Through observations, conversations with children, and examinations of their work, teachers develop understandings of how individual students are learning. Teachers then adjust the pace, content, or direction of the curriculum to facilitate greater learning for individual children and for the class. Ancona parents are full partners in the learning process. Our teachers communicate with parents throughout the school year and are available for additional consultation when necessary. In an effort to smoothly transition students from our independent, progressive school to a variety of high schools, letter grades are given to 7th and 8th grade students. The NWEA MAP test is administered in the 6th and 7th grades to prepare students for the high school admissions process.

• After Ancona

  Ancona graduates go on to some of the most esteemed high schools in the city. We are proud that we are a school that educators choose to send their children to, and we are proud of our alums who are artists and activists, elected officials, principals, cultural institution leaders, investment bankers, fashion designers, and professional musicians.