The Museum School of Avondale Estates

By partnering with museums and learning institutions, we offer students real-life experience with classroom lessons and allow them to make discoveries driven by their own curiosity. Based on research about how children learn best, our education model encourages exploration, inspires creativity and fosters enthusiasm for learning.
This is hands-on learning at its best. This is The Museum School of Avondale Estates.

School Website - The Museum School

Learning is student-centered, project-based and interdisciplinary. Curriculum is organized into nine-week thematic units, creating an integrated approach to learning as lessons and ideas from one classroom subject are reinforced in other subjects and on learning expeditions. Students examine the lesson themes from all angles and create museum-style exhibits to demonstrate what they have learned. Four times a year, they share these projects and their knowledge with parents and other community members at Exhibit Night.

Common Core Standards & The Arts

The Museum School’s guiding principle for curriculum is constructivism, a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on experiences, individuals construct their own understanding of the world. While the curriculum is firmly rooted in Georgia Performance Standards, constructivism avoids a one-size-fits-all method of instruction by allowing teachers to customize lessons to each student’s needs.

In the constructivist classroom, learning is:

Constructed. Students create new knowledge based on their prior knowledge.
Active. Students determine some of their own goals and then analyze, interpret and predict information.
Reflective. Students think about their experiences and interests and set goals accordingly.
Collaborative. Students work together to make discoveries and add their prior knowledge to that of the group.
Inquiry-based. The main focus is on solving problems. Students ask questions and investigate to find answers and draw conclusions.
Evolving. Students reevaluate prior conclusions as new knowledge emerges and understanding deepens.
Personalized. Standards-based curricula are customized to each student’s prior knowledge. All students learn, because teachers meet them at their current level of understanding.

The Common Core Standards & Interdisciplinary Instructional Units

Charlotte Danielson: On Teaching and the Common Core

Danielson / Common Core Features: The 'What' and the 'How'

WHICH FEATURES OF THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS, MENTIONED BY DANIELSON ARE OF GREATEST IMPORTANCE TO YOU?

- Student understanding of Concepts vs acquisition of superficial knowledge

- Enable students to explore concepts, discuss them with each other, to question and respectfully challenge classmates assertions

- Students invited, or even required, to think, and explain their thinking.....invite students to think and to understand complex concepts.

- Close reading of texts

- Balance of fiction and non-fiction

- Attention to what students are doing....being asked good questions and asking good questions themselves

- Teacher collaboration, analysis of student work, review videos of one another teaching....inviting teachers to think deeply about what the students are learning, and about whether they are really teaching for understanding, and how they can do better.

- Student use of primary resources

- Formative assessment assimilated into lesson plans.....evidence that students understand what they are learning

- Differentiated instruction and mastery (ensure conceptual understanding of place value - needed before pacing guide focus on prime numbers)

- Extremely challenging test items released so far

- Premium on deeper learning and understanding and (deep) engagement (challenge to reduce boredom)

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