MITCH Curriculum, Standards, Vision, Mission

MITCH Curricula

Core Knowledge Sequence
- The Core Knowledge Foundation is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a mission toward educational excellence and equity. The curriculum turns education into an adventure, exploring historical and modern cultures around the globe. It is designed to develop literate and responsible citizens, situating skills and assessment in specific topics of knowledge, called the Core Knowledge Sequence. These materials are under constant revision to provide more representative and diverse content.
Collaborative Literacy
- Collaborative Literacy is a learning paradigm in which social and emotional learning is an intrinsic part of reading and writing instruction. Firmly rooted in best practices, Collaborative Literacy reflects the following principles:
  - Learners become independent readers, writers, and thinkers
  - Authentic reading and writing experiences
  - Equitable access
  - Professional learning
  - Meaningful assessments
  - SEL with literacy instruction
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness
- The two best predictors of early reading success are alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness. (Adams, 1990) With the Heggerty curriculum, students receive daily practice in both. This explicit instruction scaffolds support for students to work with early, basic and advanced phonemic awareness skills. With daily lessons, students are able to build the necessary foundation to become automatic decoders of print.
Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)
- IEW, a sequentially scaffolded curriculum, develops oral and written language skills beginning with the imitation of mentor texts through the development of creative writing skills. Students are taught structure and style with an emphasis on a continuous cycle of listening, speaking, reading, writing and thinking.
Eureka Math
- Through Eureka Math, students learn to think, strategize and solve problems, not just get answers. This curriculum teaches mathematics as a "story," building students’ knowledge to help them achieve deep understanding of the why behind the numbers. While this approach is unfamiliar to those of us who grew up memorizing mathematical facts and formulas, it has been tested and proven. Today, it has been adopted as the most widely used math curriculum in the U.S.
Agriculture
- MITCH's very own Agriculture Curriculum is built around Indigenous Seed Rematriation, or the return of Indigenous seeds to their original communities. These lessons are tied to national academic standards and were developed in alignment with best practices and frameworks found in Culturally Responsive Teaching, Place Based Learning and Social and Emotional Learning. A lens of Agroecology focuses the MITCH Agriculture Program on social and ecological concepts like diversity, interdependence, connection, and culture. Indigenous ways of knowing, history, current reality, and resilience are a central focus. Our school garden is the site where much of this learning happens, including a school-wide composting program and partnerships with local non-profits, like Neighbors Nourishing Communities. Funding from Tualatin Soil and Water Conservation District sends students on three annual field trips to Our Table Cooperative, a local, biodynamic and community-owned farm.
The Great Body Shop
- The Great Body Shop is a comprehensive health education curriculum that is sequential, developmentally appropriate, culturally sensitive and medically accurate. Their mission is to equip children and their families with the knowledge and skills needed to make healthy choices throughout their lives. The Great Body Shop promotes wellness through the integration of ten health content strands including substance abuse and violence prevention, injury and personal safety, fitness and nutrition, disease and illness prevention, body systems, growth & development, illness & disease prevention and consumer and environmental health. Teachers and students work with instructional materials to provide a solid understanding of the health issues found in TGBS's magazine. At the end of each month, students take the Student Issue of the magazine home and use it for family activities, discussions and homework.
A Little SEL
- A Little SEL helps teachers and families promote, teach and reinforce social and emotional skills with young children. When students watch the daily videos in the classroom, they are provided with familiar characters dealing with scenarios similar to those that they experience in their own lives. These videos become a catalyst for conversations, where children can make connections with the characters and discuss ways that they could solve similar problems. Within the context of the classroom, children can learn more about their peers, building their social awareness.
Tribal History / Shared History
- Learning about tribal nations in Oregon is important for all students. Each nation has a distinct origin story, worldview, and timeline of their history and contemporary context. However, much of that information has been presented to the general American public from a non-Native American perspective, filled with clichés, misconceptions and falsehoods. The Oregon Department of Education partnered with representatives of the nine federally recognized Tribal governments in Oregon to create Essential Understandings of Native Americans in Oregon. These nine essential understandings have been created to serve as an introduction into the vast diversity of the Oregon Native American experience. At MITCH, we integrate these lessons into the classroom as well as our Agriculture & Seed Rematriation Program.