Curriculum

The Milwaukee College Preparatory School’s educational program focuses on a heavy dose of positive affirmation and critical thinking skills complimented by basic, no nonsense educational pedagogy. The positive affirmations and critical thinking skills are intertwined with everything that is taught. Students are constantly being praised for good choices or academic endeavors made, and they are constantly being pushed to make connections, inferences or comparisons in a Socratic way.

The core of our language arts program is the Open Court reading series and phonics program. The phonics wall cards, which the students go through in a rather boisterous fashion each day, supply the students with the skills to decode and read any word in the English language.

We have adopted the Saxon math curriculum and are following it almost verbatim, with the exception of promoting all students one year ahead of schedule (i.e. the 2nd grade completes the third grade material). We expect our students to have completed Algebra by the end of 8th grade.

The teaching of Phonics and Math each morning is predominantly done through direct instruction.

Accelerated Math and Reading

We complement the Saxon and Reading curriculum with the Accelerated Math and Reading programs from Renaissance Learning. The Saxon math program is excellent on exposing students to many concepts and developing critical thinking skills, but it is not as strong on mastery of basic skills. Therefore, we have invested in the Accelerated Math program to complement the Saxon program. The Reading program encourages students to read independently from a variety of genres at their grade level. It helps increase fluency and exposes students to many new experiences via literature. In 2007–08, we started using the Compass Learning program which is a dynamic on-line software program tailored directly to a child’s academic ability. It is used in school, at home, through a public library or anyplace that one can log on to the internet.

We have adopted the 6+1 Traits writing program as a framework for teaching and writing schoolwide.

The Reading, Writing and Math make up the core academic program each day. Social Studies, Science, Poetry, Instructional Technology, Fine Arts and Physical Education round out the day.

Robert Rauh, Principal
MilwCollegePrep
414–445–8020/414–445–8167 (fax)
rrauh@milwcollegeprep.com