Curriculum and Programs
DoDEA Curriculum Guides/Standards
AFNORTH International School offers many kinds of learning opportunities for students. Students here are exposed to activities and insights that students at other schools don’t have. The facility is a marvel. The international mix of staff provides students with perspectives that are not available to them elsewhere. There are excursions and field studies that students will experience. At the core of learning is the basic curriculum – reading and language arts, maths, science, and social studies.
Every few years, a specific curricular area is reviewed by the staff in the school. Teachers from each of the three nations are chosen to work on a committee that has as its purpose the revision of that curricular area. Meetings are conducted over a period of several months. At those meetings they look at the “National” requirements of each nation. For example, the Americans bring the DoDDS curriculum and the American Standards. British teachers bring the English National Curriculum. The Canadians bring the curriculum Of Ontario, which, as the largest province, has had its curriculum approved by the Canadian Forces schools. The committee members look through the curricular guides and select those objectives considered essential at each year level and those objectives common to all three nations. There is an extremely high degree of congruence between the AFNORTH curriculum and that of each of the three nations. The result is that AFNORTH School has a curriculum that reflects the highest minimum requirement.
The basic skills areas of reading / language arts, maths, science and social studies are taught using AFNORTH School objectives derived from guides of each of the three nations. Each teacher has a copy of the AFNORTH objectives and uses textbooks and supplementary materials to support those objectives. The textbook does not define what is taught in the school; the objectives do. In that way, it can be ensured that all students learn the same thing at each year level.
Outside agencies that come to inspect the curriculum continually report that AFNORTH School has a rich and varied programmme. Most families returning to their host nation or to another service school find that their children are more than well equipped to handle the new school situation. Thus the AFNORTH Curriculum and the process used to develop it, while being unique to this school, serves teachers and students well.
Special Needs Information: list the following, linking back to these DoDDS-E and or DoDEA webpages:
