Our curriculum, which is fully aligned with New Jersey Curriculum Content Standards for public schools, is developed and regularly revised by subject-area leaders and teachers at BelovED who use a combination of curricular resources to support it. Some of these resources have been developed in-house; some have been shared by other high-performing charter schools; some have been licensed from commercial curriculum publishers; and some are Open Educational Resources (OER) made available online for free use or adaptation. You can see our curriculum by clicking on the links to the left.
At BelovED, we define high-quality instruction as instruction which produces scholar mastery of ambitious learning objectives. When teaching doesn’t produce such learning, we believe it is our responsibility to do better.
Research has shown that scholar learning is promoted by data-driven, engaging, relevant, joyful, active/interactive instruction. That is the kind of instruction we endeavor to provide.
Visitors to BelovED will see our teachers working hard to make their instruction engaging, relevant, fun, and active or interactive. For instance, BelovED’s teachers generally begin their lessons with a “hook,” which is intended to engage scholars right from the start; and employ Responsive Classroom principles (such as using curricular materials to which scholars can strongly relate) to keep their scholars engaged.
Visitors to primary grade classrooms may see teachers get their scholars out of their seats, periodically, for instruction that gets the scholars’ hearts pumping faster, such as learning how to count to ten while doing jumping jacks. This makes for a fun lesson and helps to keep the scholars alert and attentive throughout the day. Visitors to middle or high school classrooms may see that the teacher has organized an in-class debate about an important social justice issue. This, once again, makes learning engaging and fun and can get scholars’ hearts pumping faster.
BelovED’s instructional model also incorporates Teach Like a Champion (“TLC”) pedagogical techniques and the effective use of technology. Visitors to BelovED classrooms will see a full array of TLC techniques being used and will also see a considerable amount of technology being used in a targeted, highly effective way.
Great teachers are generally not born great teachers. They become great teachers by working hard to develop their professional skills. We provide intensive professional development training and continual coaching that helps our teachers constantly upgrade their skills and become ever more effective. The world’s greatest athletes, despite their high skill levels, all have coaches. Our teachers, even the more senior, all have in-house coaches as well. They never stop getting better – and that is why BelovED’s scholars – year after year after year – do better and better on state learning assessments.