Beyond the Core
Creekside has the opportunity to offer amazing programming beyond our core subjects (math, English language arts, science and social studies). Our pathways offer multi-year schemas to build upon existing knowledge and expand students' breadth of experience.
Art
Art allows students to grow their right brains and push their creative boundaries. Our art teacher works collaboratively with our classroom and multicultural education teacher to use art to link art to core instruction.
Social Emotional Learning
We utilize Changemakers and Life Ingredients curriculum. Changemakers utilizes free-standing lessons and teaching practices to promote social emotional learning (SEL) in students.
Life Ingredients aims to create an emotionally stable population, one more aware of its thoughts and feelings and more capable of empathy and understanding than any generation in history.
Students in the older grades transition from Changemakers Social Emotional curriculum to Restorative Justice practice. Teachers work with students daily to work through self discovery, conflict, and team building.
Like the younger grades, teachers also utilize Life Ingredients to calm the mind.
Spanish
Creekside's 4th-8th grade Spanish program is unique and goal-oriented. Our objective is to prepare 8th graders with the skills they will need to readily begin high school Spanish 2 or 3 (dependent on proficiency). Those who choose to start with Spanish 1 will have a much easier transition. Fourth through sixth graders receive cultural and geographical instruction, in addition to a teaching method known as Comprehensible Input, which emphasizes language acquisition through meaningful, authentic language using stories, art, film, and music in a comprehensible manner which increases over time. As they move into 7th and 8th grade, grammar becomes a more prominent element to classes in addition to comprehensible input through reading, writing, and listening in the target language. Our curriculum and resources include, but are not limited to Somos, Voces, Señor Wooly, Adiós, and Conjuguemos.
Science Elective
At Creekside we believe that students need additional science opportunities in order to fully comprehend the CA next generation standards. New for the 23-24 school year we will be offering a once a week elective for students in grades 4-8 to explore STEM and environmental science opportunities.