Summit Charter School - Cashiers, North Carolina

Seeking Excellence

Phone: (828) 743-5755
Fax: (828) 743-9157

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Summit Pledge

Each day in my words and in my deeds I will do my best to live these seven virtues...

Honesty
Respect
Responsibility
Self Discipline
Compassion
Perseverance
and Giving

Eric Sink

Lauren Bennett

Welcome to Fifth Grade

Creating and maintaining interest, developing and nurturing self-discipline, and modeling the “Golden Rule” are the central tenets of the 5th basecamp philosophy. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom and when I have a classroom that is living a love of wisdom, I know what I am doing is right for children. The “teachable moment” for me is not just when a child gets a concept or idea, but when they realize that through their effort they own this joyous sense of accomplishment.

When children are so interested in learning that school work is no longer work is a mark that the classroom community is rich in opportunity to explore and safe enough that a child can take a stab at learning without fear of failure. I have always attempted to choose interesting themes to teach the necessities of elementary curriculum. For example, every year has begun with a study of ancient Egypt. We carve scarab beetles from soap, we mummify bananas, and we end the study with a night in Egypt. During Egypt night we dress as Egyptians and eat authentic ancient Egyptian foods.

As well, I believe that we should energize our daily lessons with color, patterns, vivid facts, personal choice, and most of all, make the learning experience multimodal. In our study of fractals, we use JavaScript programs to demonstrate the fractal concept. We create an accurate and colorful Sierpinski triangle that later decorates our walls. In most math classes we use manipulatives to enhance each child’s concrete understanding of concepts.

Through the year, writer’s workshop is a time for young writers to write about what they want to write about and to explore new techniques in their writing. Even with something as “boring” as a vocabulary test, my students use a remote polling program to match images to the correct vocabulary word. For each student in 5th basecamp there is an expectation to work towards excellence and to learning through interest and personal choice.

Finally, all that I value about teaching would be with little meaning if it could not be tied back to how we live and breathe with each other. To me the Golden Rule is unique because it always puts others first, but never forgets about caring for yourself. We are all connected and child should know this, and know it well. A few times each week students take the time to huddle together and discuss problems in the classroom or just share what made the day special. There is the expectation that students will give and receive honest feedback. There are no desks; we have tables and must work as a group, helping one another to build a community.