The California Department of Education has produced listings of standards it expects from each grade level within the state. Cherry Chase strives to meet or exceed all of these levels of expectation. For complete details of these standards, go to the California Dept. of Education website. Information is broken out by subject - language arts, math, social studies, science, and visual/performing arts.

In-Class Performing Arts (Starting Arts Program)

This year, all Cherry Chase students will have six weeks of once-a-week lessons in each of the following disciplines: Dance, Visual Arts, Music, and Theatre, for a total of 24 weeks. The lessons will be provided by Starting Arts, a group of skilled, professional artists.

Starting Arts is a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is the promotion and preservation of quality arts education in public schools. Since 2001, Starting Arts has partnered with school communities and districts in the San Francisco Bay area to provide both during and after school programs in visual and performing arts for children in grades K through 12.

Unlike many arts education providers, Starting Arts actively promotes all four arts disciplines: Dance, Theatre, Music and Visual Arts. Starting Arts recruits skilled professional artists eager to share their knowledge and passion with children. Classes are standards-based, offered in both independent (art alone) and integrated subject formats. Starting Arts' instructional focus includes performance/exhibition as well as art knowledge and appreciation. Starting Arts is all about "doing it"!

Tremendous abilities are fostered by arts education. Studies have shown time and again that arts education improves overall academic performance. Acknowledging this, federal, state and local agencies have adopted comprehensive arts education standards in an attempt to plant arts solidly into the core curricula of public schools. Despite this support, budget shortfalls dating back to the 1980's have resulted in the steady disappearance of arts education from schools nationwide.

For more information on Starting Arts, please visit their website at http://www.startingarts.com.

Open Court Maps

Open Court is the Language Arts Curriculum that Cherry Chase and the Sunnyvale School District use. Parents have often wondered what their children are learning in Open Court and how they can best support their children in this curriculum. Now grade level summary maps are available (see links below).

The summary map lists each unit covered in a given grade. The unit summary overviews the story read, the phonics, word knowledge, comprehension strategies and skills, and language arts areas studied.