Specialist Curriculum

The creative process is essential for all learners and art develops learners who can perceive visual, spatial and aesthetic characteristics of the world around them. Our students have 90 minutes of art instruction weekly. Art is integrated into the core curriculum areas. Work of our students is on display in an annual Art Show as well as a gallery showing at the Fay Chandler Art Gallery at the Maud Morgan Arts Center.

Mission Statement
The mission statement of the Cambridge Public School Physical Education Department is to provide meaningful, relevant opportunities to support all students in developing the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary to be healthy, physically active and engaged in their own health and wellbeing. During Physical Education class, students will develop competence in a variety of motor skills, will increase self-efficacy regarding their abilities to be physically active and control their health and develop health-enhancing attitudes. Upon completion of our program, students will be empowered to take control of their health and will be engaged in lifelong efforts to maintain and enhance their health.

Program Goals

1. The students will understand the importance of physical activity in promoting a healthy lifestyle.
2. The students will accept ownership and responsibility for the health and wellness of self and others.
3. The students will demonstrate competency in the development of gross and fine motor skills.
4. The students will understand the importance of developing cooperation skills.
5. The student will achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness.
6. The students will understand how to maintain a learning environment that promotes learning, creativity and self-expression.

Grading
Students in Kindergarten are not given a grade at the Baldwin School. Students in 1st to 5th grade will receive four grades per semester. Two grades in P.E., unit 2 and 4, (semester one), and unit 6 and 7, (semester two). These units will be assessed with a rubric. They will receive a grade for their participation and for respect.

Grading System: ME= Meeting, PM=Partially Meeting, NY=Not Yet Evident, NT=Not Taught.

Meet Baldwin's Physical Education Teacher
Sylvain Gladu 
My classes will provide experiences, which will develop initiative, self- reliance, self-worth, respect, kindness to others and love of learning. In other words, the students will learn to develop strong and healthy bodies through physical activities and music.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me. My phone extension is 505 or email me.

The Baldwin school is dedicated to helping each student experience the joy of music by providing them with a quality musical experience that they will take with them, and remember throughout their lives. Kodaly is our concept of education and a philosophy of teaching. Singing is the essence of this concept, along with learning to listen (the development of the inner ear). Learning to sing tunefully is the overarching goal of the elementary music curriculum. 

The purpose of music education at the elementary level is to introduce and enhance musical meaning centered around the development of the individual singing voice. In its many forms, music serves as an access point for understanding the world in which children dwell. Music is taught at the Baldwin School to enable children to experience community at its deepest level in the form of ensemble music-making practices where many diverse ethnicities, religions, world-views and backgrounds can be unified in a “oneness” unavailable through non-artistic means. This view promotes the school atmosphere as a microcosm of the world in which children will someday inhabit and shape as adults. 

As students work to become expressive musicians, the practice areas of musical development are:

• inner hearing (audiation)
• singing and solfege
• rhythm and rhythmic solfege
• part work such as canons, rounds, ostinato, and partner songs
• the role of audience member in various contexts
• listening for understanding  
• music notation (writing and reading music)
• rhythmic and tonal pattern development
• melodic and harmonic work with barred instruments
• composition and improvisation

Students in 5th grade choose an instrument (winds, brass, strings) and are taught twice weekly to develop basic playing techniques.  

Students in grades 4 and 5 have the opportunity to participate in the All City Chorus, which meets after school on Wednesdays at CRLS.  

Music Schedule

• All JK/K classes attend music three times per week, twice for 40 minutes and once for 30 minutes.
• Grades 1 and 2 attend music three times weekly for 40 minutes.
• Grade 3 attends music once per week of 40 minutes.
• Grade 4 attends music once per week for 40 minutes.
• Grade 5 is currently in a rotation of woodwinds, brass, and strings. Students begin their permanent assignment at the end of October. They attend music twice weekly for 40 minutes.

Our teachers are deeply committed to integrating technology into our curriculum. Baldwin School piloted Google Docs in 2011-2012 and that is now being used in the district’s upper campuses. We are pioneering the use of tablet computers in classrooms in conjunction with MIT and TERC. Every morning, our computer lab is open before school offering Symphony Math, a web-enabled program that helps students understand match at a conceptual level.

Our students are exposed to Scratch graphical programming, iMovie to create photo slideshows and movies, and the Microsoft Office suite of programs for writing and presentations. Other applications include math programs such as Building Blocks, FasttMath and TuxMath. TuxType and Type to Learn are also available to our students to help them with their keyboarding skills.