Academics
Providing our students with a challenging education is the focus of our efforts at Peoria Academy. Creative and critical thinking, a love of learning, and the development of moral awareness are our major guideposts.
Our curriculum focuses on the core subjects of mathematics, English, science, language, and history, while also placing an emphasis on the fine arts, foreign language instruction and physical development. Our students are equipped with the skills necessary to adapt to the advances in technology.
While our curriculum may be accelerated, our students do not experience the pressures that often accompany higher learning. With encouragement and support, our teachers guide our students to increasingly more difficult tasks. We expect that our students will perform well on their yearly achievement tests, and that our students will easily make the transition to the next stage of their academic career.
Our goal is to prepare our student's for the future. The focus remains on the student's progress toward developing their character and their mind in an atmosphere that honors the individual and each child's unique potential.
Thematic Teaching
Whenever possible, we integrate instruction through monthly all school themes. Finding ways to tie together instructional units helps our children understand and retain information. For example: during our Multi-Cultural Month in January, students study Africa in Kindergarten. The social studies and science units focus on the land (deserts, rainforest), and the animals of Africa. In math, the children will measure the height and/or graph the height of various plastic African animals. Songs, stories, and artwork will all focus on Africa, as well.
Enriched and Accelerated Learning
In the middle school, we begin to offer students individualized and/or small group opportunities to move through the curriculum at a different pace. While most of our 7th graders will take two years to cover the material for Algebra 1, qualifying 7th grade students are given the opportunity to take Algebra in one year through an independent course, followed by an independent Geometry course in their 8th grade year. Other qualifying students may be provided with opportunities to take a variety of high school on-line courses to enrich and accelerate their learning, as well.
Multi-Sensory Instruction
Research has shown that children learn in different ways, and our goal is to provide children with opportunities to learn through a variety of modalities.
Project Lead the Way
Peoria Academy is one of 6 middle schools to offer Project Lead the Way to our students. As a project based, pre-engineering program, our students are given opportunities to design and create race cars, robots, or build bridges using CAD technology.
