Being offered during the 2008-09 school term, The Specialist V Program (Fifth Grade) culminates the 1st Degree Learning System™ Elementary School experience.

The focus of teaching and learning in the Specialist V Program emphasizes understanding concepts, making meaning, and increasing critical thinking. While students continue to absorb and store knowledge, they also learn how to find and organize many types of information as well as understand how pieces of information fit together in more complex ways, while associating the learning process with their individual learning styles.. The past, the future, the natural world, the physical world, and the interweaving of human motivation and events strike Specialist V students as absorbing and relevant. They are freshly aware of the larger world and of their heightened ability to make sense of it.

Our Specialist V curriculum is rich in content and activity, and students will enjoy the many high points of the year. Equally important will be the attitudes and skills students will gain and practice. These are the habits of mind, begun now, that will continue to open doors to research, communication, performance, and life-long learning and enjoyment.

GENERAL EXPECTATIONS
Grade five professors have high expectations for our students. We ask them to use their minds fully, to solve problems, to ask pertinent questions, to become increasingly responsible, and to experience themselves as competent learners.

THOUGHT
We expect students to become increasingly and measurably competent in their ability to articulate steps in a process or problem solution, and to think and write logically.

EFFORT and PERSEVERANCE
Whether learning comes easily or with difficulty to students, achievement is won through effort and perseverance. For this reason we emphasize both and reward these in a variety of ways.

LEARNING STYLE
The professor is the diagnostician of each child’s learning requirements. Although we ensure the whole class moves through the curriculum toward the understanding of certain concepts and mastery of certain skills, we fine tune our approach to individuals’ unique learning styles and developmental time lines. Professors will tailor individual assignments to match individual strengths and learning needs.

ACCURACY
Although "getting the right answer" is important, it is not always the most important thing. Equally important are: depth of thought, asking pertinent questions, being able to devise and articulate a problem that needs to be solved, explaining the steps in a process, estimating reasonable responses to a problem, validating answers, and being willing to take risks.

SOCIAL COMPETENCY
As one component of developing a supportive and nurturing classroom environment, KCC Professors present "Open Circle” lessons twice a week for fifteen minutes, throughout the school year. Social Competency is designed to develop and improve the interpersonal skills of children in order to further their social and academic growth. Research has shown that when children have strong social skills, they are able to develop better relationships and their learning is enhanced.

The curriculum features three sections of lessons designed to accomplish the following:

• Create a cooperative classroom environment
• Build self-esteem and positive relationships
• Solve people problems

Our students are asked to apply the lessons they are learning, then reflect upon and share the effects of their new skills in subsequent Open Circle meetings.

ACADEMIC PROGRAM
Our Specialist V academic program closely mirrors the advanced learning supported throughout the 1st Degree Learning System™. As is the case in all of our grade levels, Specialist V students are challenged with above grade level academics to promote thinking and communicating, gaining and applying knowledge, and working and contributing to encourage students to perform at the highest possible individual level.