At Q300, K-4 teachers use the Teachers College Reading Program to improve students’ accuracy, fluency, and comprehension skills. Our overall reading approach exposes students to an array of culturally appropriate texts. Using the Fountas and Pinnel assessment tools, students have their reading levels assessed multiple times throughout the school year by their classroom teacher. Based on these levels the students receive differentiated instruction by being organized in dynamic book clubs and guided reading groups. The assessment results are also used as a formative tool to guide their instruction throughout the overall reading curriculum.

In grades K-4 at Q300, we teach the writing process by using Teachers College’s Writing curriculum. Students learn how to create narrative, opinion, and informational writing pieces through the use of mentor texts. We encourage students to peer review and to provide constructive feedback to each other. To celebrate the end of each unit, students share their writing pieces with their families and friends during our publishing celebrations.

We draw upon resources such as Project M2, Project M3, and EngageNY to build a robust and differentiated math curriculum at Q300 for Grades K-4, teachers expose students to deep, conceptual knowledge of numbers, operations, and other key concepts. Students engage in discussion to better develop understanding and to challenge the ideas of their peers.

At Q300, we frame our science curriculum to the HMH Science Dimensions Program, which guides students to learn through exploration, analysis, application, and explanation and think like scientists. Students in grades K-4 engage in hands-on explorations to investigate science topics on and beyond their grade level, and engage in extension activities that allow students to connect concepts to real world situations. Additionally, the engineering design process is embedded and taught in the program, and students get to ask questions, plan, create, and improve designs to solve authentic world problems. This process encourages students to think critically, innovatively, and collaboratively.

Grades K-4 at Q300 use the NYC Department of Education’s Passport to Social Studies curriculum that helps them gain a better understanding of the role that people and events have played to shape our nation and the world. Students are also encouraged and guided to make better connections between major historical ideas and their own lives, while seeing themselves as active members of the local and global community.

Our computer science teachers are actively involved with the Department of Education Computer Science for All effort. Our K-4 students engage in foundational computer science concepts through teacher-directed lessons and the application of computer science, including open-ended creative computing platforms such as Scratch, robotics and maker education. Students engage in Computer Science twice a week.

All students will receive Spanish language instruction, twice per week, that challenges them to develop vocabulary, written and verbal communication, and cultural understanding of Spanish-speaking cultures.

Using the data obtained from our most recent PE Works assessment, we have designed a physical education plan so that all students in grades K-4 benefit from robust physical education classes twice per week. We also use the Physical Best curriculum, and classroom teachers supplement scheduled PE using the Move to Improve classroom-based physical movement program.

As a result of the immense financial and human resources that are donated by our PTA, we are able to offer:

K-2nd Grade: Music Foundations

The major emphasis of this course is to provide students with a variety of musical experiences and activities including opportunities for students to sing, play instruments, move to music, listen and analyze, learn musical notation, create, and perform. The course also develops discrimination and critical judgment in music that is heard or produced, and encourages interest in music from diverse cultures and historical periods.

K-4th Grade: Visual Art (Arts Connection)

Art aids children in many aspects of their development, including physical, social, cognitive, and emotional. The aim of the Art House Astoria program is to provide a variety of visual outlets to young, formative minds that are at the peak of their unrestrained creativity and to foster technical artistic skills as well as an open and interpretive outlook when it comes to problem-solving and innovation. Students will explore drawing, painting, and design techniques through various art mediums.

3rd and 4th grade: Dance (Alvin Ailey Dance)

Through our collaboration with Alvin Ailey Dance, third and fourth grade students will have the opportunity to learn the foundations of dance and creative movement. For the last year, students have had a West African dance residency.

Kindergarten and first grade students visit the Explorations room twice per week. There, students engage in open-ended play and age appropriate pre-engineering work by using various sizes of blocks and other manipulative materials including gear sets. In Explorations, students imagine, create, build, manage and resolve conflicts, and develop collaborative interpersonal skills. Teachers facilitate this process and integrate their observations of student interactions into their other coursework.

Our partners at the Center for Architecture have developed and lead a 10-week architecture program for our second graders. Students will create a scale model of a section of the school’s neighborhood and present their final projects to families at the end of the program. The entire experience is interdisciplinary and includes a unique opportunity for young children to experience a public speaking opportunity.

All K-4 students will participate in a 10-week chess program that is organized by NY Chess Kids and embedded into the school day. Students will learn the fundamentals and progress towards learning various strategies as they engage in one-on-one and other competitions. Families interested in exposing their children to additional chess opportunities can register their children for the after-school program that takes place each week at our school (See www.NYChessKids.org).

Homework is intended to be a logical extension of the school day and serves to reinforce the skills, techniques, and information learned during school hours. As an inquiry-based school, most of the learning at Q300 is collaborative and experiential. For this reason, the school does not assign mandatory homework in kindergarten through second grade, nor will there be make-up homework for students who were absent. Teachers provide optional extension activities regularly; this material is reviewed and will be evaluated, but is not mandatory and will not be included in a child’s grade. Beginning in third grade, students will receive mandatory homework.