Curriculum
In addition to the Utah Core Standards North Star Academy uses challenging and research-based curriculum for general instruction. This curriculum includes The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum, Core Knowledge Sequence, Core Knowledge Language Arts, Saxon Math, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Global Geography, Pearson Human Geography, and Fountas and Pinnell.
Core Knowledge
The Core Knowledge Sequence is a solid, specific, shared core curriculum that helps children establish strong foundations of knowledge, grade by grade. It is based on research done by a team of parents, teachers, scientists, professional curriculum organizations and experts from the Core Knowledge Advisory Board. Core Knowledge provides a good blend of arts, history, science, math, language arts and other fundamental basics necessary to be considered “culturally literate."
Saxon Math
Saxon Math is a research-based math program that systematically distributes instruction, practice and assessment throughout the academic year as opposed to concentrating, or massing, the instruction, practice and assessment of related concepts into a short period of time — usually within a unit or chapter. Saxon Math’s unique approach to math instruction ensures that students not only gain but also retain essential math skills.
Geography
North Star offers an advanced placement course in 9th grade in addition to the general education world geography class. The curriculum for the world geography class follows the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Global Geography textbook.
The Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) course introduces students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth's surface. Students employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine human social organization and its environmental consequences. They also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their science and practice. It is an excellent course for preparing students to become geo-literate youth and adults.
Reading
Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading program is a specific phonics, spelling and grammar curriculum that provides teachers with a resource for specific instruction that is correlated to the books at that student’s reading level.
The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is designed to provide daily instruction in 8 phonological and phonemic awareness skills. It is an explicit and systematic approach in which students practice blending, segmenting, isolating and manipulating words, syllables, onset-rime and/or phonemes each day.
Character Education
As a school, we participate in the nationally-recognized Character Counts program, which promotes the development of 6 pillars of character: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. This program helps students learn social skills, problem solving, and conflict resolution. By giving students clear behavior expectations and appropriate and effective tools, they learn to treat each other with kindness and respect. Students develop the confidence and skills needed to succeed in life when confronted with problems and conflict.
Leader in Me
North Star Academy also participates in The Leader in Me program. The Leader in Me program is a whole-school transformation model that acts like the operating system of a computer–it improves the performance of all other programs. Based on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Leader in Me equips students with the self-confidence and skills they need to thrive in th 21st century economy.
Special Education
The vision of Special Educaiton is to promote educational excellence for students with diverse needs. The mission of Special Education is to provide services, instructional strategies, resources, and learning objectives for students with disabilities that will expand each student’s capabilities and quality of life. Our goal is to provide individualized educational programs in the omst inclusive environment appropriate to meet the needs of each student so they may be able to develop the skills needed for participation in teh general curriculum.