7th and 8th grade students study Visual and Performing Arts, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Mathematics.
9th grade students study Visual and Performing Arts, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Mathematics and Spanish. In order to foster more in depth learning, our classes run longer and meet four times a week.
Academic Learning and Reasoning Process
Student learning is integrated around critical thinking themes: Perception, Elaboration, Problem Solving, Creative Thinking, and Collaborative Inquiry. Students leverage critical thinking and collaboration skills along with understandings from the disciplines to pursue questions about their world and to increase their capacity to generate knowledge, relationships, and actions that influence positive change in their communities. Problems, conclusions, and decisions are evaluated and challenged through the use of five reflective questions:
- What possible points of view are there? (Perspective)
- How do we know? (Evidence)
- What difference does it make? (Relevance)
- Does this relate to something else? (Connections)
- What if assumptions were changed? (Supposition)
Our Community
Students learn through participatory, proactive, and collaborative experiences in which knowledge is constructed by the students. The school environment builds inclusion for all members and celebrates community learning. The school community encompasses students, teachers, and parents working together to promote learning in a caring culture. Students develop confidence in their abilities in a supportive and interactive environment.
Students are assigned to a small group with a teacher called a Guild. Guilds are similar to advisories or homerooms and students stay with their Guilds for the entire three years. Guilds promote a sense of belonging, shared leadership, collaboration, and support individual purpose and development. Guilds meet four days a week for 30 minutes. During this time, teachers and students focus on group projects, challenges, decision making, setting goals, social skills, conflict management, celebrations, and having a good time together.
The Arts
“Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses – especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” -- Leonardo DaVinci
Students develop skill with arts technique and media. They use those skills to create, interpret and represent ideas encountered throughout the curriculum. Different forms of representation expand students’ ability to think critically. Expressing learning through the arts deepens students’ knowledge, as they must examine ideas from many perspectives to make effective and meaningful statements. The arts play a critical role in students’ reflection and in the demonstration of their learning.
Arts Integration
Students need to understand the connections and relevance of what they are studying to be successful and engaged. Lake Washington School District curriculum materials are used to show students natural connections between disciplines; i.e., data gathering in science and analyzing the data results require mathematical applications to accurately represent data trends. Students communicate their findings from investigations through writing, multi-media presentations, models, and performance.
Performance Arts
Renaissance School of Art and Reasoning focuses on providing students with opportunities to develop skills and expertise in order to express themselves and their understanding of fine and performing arts. The performing arts emphasis at Renaissance is in dance and theater. Dance is the focus of the first semester and theater follows in the second semester. Not only do Renaissance students explore different dance and theater concepts, learn specific skills, and create regularly in class, but they also participate in two mandatory performances. In the first semester students perform in a school wide dance concert. The students decide on a theme for the show via democratic processing of proposing ideas and then voting on a final theme. Student choreography makes up the majority of the content of this performance.
Second semester the students work on developing their skills in theater. We do a theatrical production every spring alternating between musicals and non-musical productions. Students often have opportunities to write plays, skits or scenes as well as develop improvisation skills.
Finally students have the option to participate in a school talent show. This occurs toward the end of the school year, in late May or early June. It is through these three performance experiences that students have the opportunity to learn theater vocabulary, basic lighting design, technical rehearsals, publicizing the performance, putting the program together, and creating something that can be enjoyed by the larger community.