Curriculum Overview
Birches offers a rich interdisciplinary education emphasizing student-driven, project-based thematic curricular units. Students collaborate on projects that foster flexible thinking, problem solving, and the integration of individual and group efforts.
We support students in their joyful exploration of the natural world by providing rich and diverse lessons highlighting the interconnectivity of academic subjects. Curricular units are informed by nature, community, and our diverse world. Many of our curricular units empower students to learn about ways that we as a community can take action to make the world more just and equitable locally and globally. We seek to broaden students’ awareness of people, cultures, and ideas beyond their own lived experiences. We emphasize the qualities that enable discovery: careful observation, creativity, and methods of experimental design. We provide opportunities for hands-on research, and we enhance learning by introducing students to guests who are career specialists in a broad range of disciplines.
We are proud that with our outstanding faculty and ample teaching spaces both indoors and outdoors, we can build on a strong academic core and also provide a program that encourages a nature-based education fostering students’ curiosity, creativity, self-reliance, and empathy.
Personalized Learning
Birches has, on average, 16 students in each multi-age classroom with two teachers per classroom. This is a ratio of students to full time teachers of 8:1. Students are encouraged to participate at their level in every project while being skillfully guided to stretch themselves. The units taught in each classroom are developed by skilled teachers and modified according to student responses. Faculty know each learner’s strengths and challenges, and they can modify curricular materials to address student interests and aptitudes. Because we develop so many of our curricular units internally, we have remarkable flexibility to adjust and personalize what we teach.
Co-curriculars
All Birches students benefit from rich visual and musical arts programs, often integrated and coordinated with grade-level teachers. Other co-curriuclars include Wellness, comprised of yoga, mindfulness, and growth education taught by teachers specialized in these areas of study. Beginning in second grade, all students take weekly Spanish classes. In addition to formal art classes, students experience the joy of art in their classrooms daily. All of our teachers are passionate about encouraging students to become critical visual thinkers, an increasingly necessary skill in our digital age.
For one hour each week, Birches students in grades 2 and up participate in Explorations. These are 6-week mini-units that cover a great variety of topics. Exploration classes are taught by Birches faculty, staff, and other community educators. Explorations gives students the opportunity to delve into electives outside of their daily curriculum. They work in small, mixed-age groups, collaborating with peers who have similar interests. Past explorations offerings have included: Improv, chess, lego robotics, soup making, ceramics, knitting, running club, sculpture, electricity & simple circuits, stop animation, 3-D printing, costume & set design, and printmaking!
Outdoor Classrooms
Birches is proud of its outdoor classrooms, used for both work and play. Climbing areas and ropeways are incorporated into the natural landscape where students can also play on traditional swings, in a gaga pit, and basketball space. The large athletic field adjacent to the school owned by the Town of Lincoln is open to Birches students during the school day.
Learn more about how we learn and play outside, and what we mean by “Nature-based.”
Meaningful Assessment and Feedback
We do not give letter grades at Birches. We believe that authentic, multi-modal assessments and comprehensive feedback to both the students and their family are cornerstones of learning. Parents have formal conferences twice during the school year providing a holistic view of the student’s growth and progress. Teachers are available for ongoing conversations as needed in order to best support student learning and growth.
“Birches students learn by exploring, observing, and asking questions; this approach builds both confidence and curiosity. It also fosters and feeds a genuine love of learning; my 1st grader cried on the first day of February break because there was no school! Birches teachers are truly “guides on the side” (as opposed to “sages on the stage”) and provide curated learning environments (often outside) to help students discover math, reading, writing, and science.”