“Truth and knowledge arise out of observation and experience rather than manipulation of accepted or given ideas”
-John Locke

To best prepare your child to become a responsible citizen and an innovative leader, Collage utilizes a Progressive approach to student education. At its core, Progressive Education teaches children through the process of experience, allowing them to combine learned knowledge, teamwork, and creativity to make inferences and arrive at conclusions. Through this framework, your child gains not only concrete academic mastery, but robust interpersonal skills as well.

Project Based Learning

It is our belief that excitement, curiosity, and exploration are essential to your child’s active engagement in their day-to-day learning. For our kids, that means hours spent seated at a desk doing worksheets by themselves is out. Instead, our staff pose novel questions and challenges to our children. We then give them the chance to work with other students, staff, and family members as they seek answers and develop a unique project of their own creation. This process hones your child’s intuition, develops their appreciation for learning, and allows them to partake in a blend of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning all at once.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

We’ve seen that by developing children’s convergent thinking (rote memorization and logic) as well as their divergent thinking (creativity and “outside the box” thinking), we give them the power to think for themselves as individuals while also becoming confident and capable students. By attending to the development of both systems of thinking, Collage helps your child build a strong foundation upon which they can add new knowledge, take positive risks, work well with others, and adapt to new situations with ease.

Reading: Collaborative Classroom and IRLA

For our Reading classes, Collage selected Collaborative Classroom’s “Being a Reader” program, scaffolded with the Independent Reading Leveling Assessment (IRLA) for accurate leveling and small group assignment. Together, these curricula provide targeted resources and support for emerging readers, as well as challenging opportunities to flex and stretch the minds of readers who are ready for more.

Math: Eureka Squared

Collage adopted Eureka Math2 as our Math curriculum in the ’22-23 schoolyear. Chosen for its methodical and concept-driven approach, this curriculum prioritizes your child developing a visual understanding of why math works the way it does. It then builds on that understanding with concept application and multi-method problem solving. With helpful guides for families, online support, and a wealth of additional resources, we’ve found this curriculum a refreshing and highly effective method of helping all types of students develop the confidence they need to succeed in Math.

Science and Social Studies

Collage uses our Project-Based Learning model for our Science and Social Studies classes. Our goal is to stoke your child’s excitement and curiosity about learning through experience, and to allow all types of learners to feel engaged and successful. By using Florida State Standards, teachers create objectives for each individual lesson based on each students’ knowledge and capabilities as well as a grading measure tool. We ensure your child reaches important educational milestones while captivating their interest in the subject matter.

Performance Assessment Through Evaluation

Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)

The MAP is a computerized assessment which adapts to the types of responses test takers select. Correct answers are followed by more difficult questions, and incorrect answers are followed by easier questions. By continually adapting the questions in real time, and covering key concepts in both Reading and Math, the MAP gives you and your child’s educational team accurate snapshots of how your learner is performing in the moment, as well as how they can improve in specific areas of need. Collage uses the MAP 3 times yearly to assess student progress, and the accompanying Growth Reports help pinpoint effective teaching and support strategies to ensure effective student growth year after year.

IXL

Collage believes strongly in the power of accurate measurement of student growth and the benefits of differentiated resources for your child. To accomplish this, we utilize IXL for individualized practice and continual monitoring of skill mastery. This program allows students to work both at school as well as at home, provides individualized recommendations for learners at level, and offers you and your child easy-to-understand measurements of how well they’re doing.

Standards-Based Grading

Collage uses a Standards-Based approach to grading, which provides parents with detailed information on how well your student is performing. Teachers use a combination of Florida B.E.S.T. Standards as well as our curriculum outcome measures to assess our students’ achievement. In this way, students are graded against a State Standard, rather than against each other. We are confident that a Standards-Based report card encapsulates our philosophy while also giving you a useful understanding of how your student is progressing throughout each school year.

HOURS

2022 – 2023 School Year:
Monday – Friday
7:00 am – 6:00 pm