curriculum

The Secondary Environment

The Montessori classroom environment is unique. It is characterized by a student-centered approach that enables students to manage time, exercise choice, organize themselves, and practice self-regulation within a group context. This development of independent self-management is crucial to succeeding in higher education and adulthood.

Multi-Age Groupings

At FSKC, students are commonly grouped in 2- or 3-year age cohorts. These communities allow opportunities for collaborative work and student leadership through:

Regularly scheduled student-led community meetings
Activities, such as in inquiry-based problem solving, and applied scientific method, that encourage diversity of perspectives, thoughts, and learning styles
Compassionate and respectful relationships and an appreciation of differences

Spiral Curriculum

A “spiral curriculum” exposes students to many interrelated topics, repeatedly over time, resulting in broad and deep knowledge. Students are academically challenged and given reasonable opportunities for pacing work to meet their needs, while also learning responsibility, meeting deadlines, and mastering skills and concepts with the support and guidance of master teachers.

Uninterrupted Work Periods

The daily schedule allows for uninterrupted work periods of 2 hours or more in core curricular subjects—math, language arts, history or humanities, sciences, additional world languages, and creative arts. Uninterrupted work periods honor student choice, foster concentration, and support student engagement, while allowing for deep inquiry and a chance to work in collaborative project teams.

What your student will learn.

the farm

Farm School KC’s farm provides an incredibly rich set of learning materials and opportunities that align with the developmental needs and tendencies of the adolescent. Problems and opportunities on the farm (from a sick animal, to planting the garden, to building new structures on site) provides learning within context, allowing the student to work with their hands and demonstrating the need for an understanding of the sciences and the progression of mankind in order to succeed.

These problems and opportunities are unique to the class community, providing opportunities to work together to use knowledge, technology, and one another to accomplish tasks that are large and meaningful-this requires both organization and discipline from the students.

microeconomics

Students wants to learn, live and work in the world, and that means having an understanding of the part they can and will play in being directly involved with production and exchange and how they can impact society. Through the microeconomy of the classroom, the students work together to generate revenue to cover the costs associated with their farm. This continuous, year-round expectation requires interaction with their peers and local community, math skills, analysis of marketing data and trends, and sophisticated decision-making. This offers context for larger global issues, and gives them a conscious, mindful relationship with the interrelationship of work and finances.

academics

Adolescents crave authentic, meaningful work and opportunities to learn. We guide our students as they are growing into problem-solvers, not just problem-doers.

Our students gain far more from solving an actual problem than reciting a series of answers found in a textbook. Large projects are often created by the needs of the farm, or the interests and explorations of the student that require lessons, expertise, and adult-sized work to be able to conquer. These real opportunities create context for the important lessons in life.

These wonderful opportunities are supplemented by additional lessons and academic benchmarks in Mathematics, Language Arts, Humanities, and Science to keep our students on track for success in life.

“Education should therefore include the two forms of work: manual and intellectual…

“… for the same person, and thus make it understood by practical experience that these two kinds complete each other and are equally essential to a civilized existence.”

— Dr. Maria Montessori