Chesapeake Montessori School

CMS offers curricular areas that include science, history, mathematics, English language arts, and Spanish. Additionally, we offer physical and creative expressions that include classes such as, but not limited to, hiking, basketball, soccer, ultimate Frisbee, martial arts, jewelry making, woodworking, song writing, stand-up comedy, drawing and painting, and movie-making. We also offer skill-based workshop electives, Socratic seminars, book groups, culinary arts, and a focus on community building such as daily and weekly chores, community council meetings, and managerial roles. It's a dynamic and empowering experience! Most classes are composed of multi-age groups with an emphasis on differentiated assignments that possess the same key concepts but that varies in the degree of difficulty and sophistication. The three period lesson is the model used to foster learning: the first period entails new knowledge being introduced by the teacher, the second period allows the student the time and activity to explore and discover concepts (really, it is the time period in which learning happens), and the third period is when a student's knowledge is tested and demonstrated as having been mastered. Additional philosophical underpinnings of the program include longer block periods in areas of the sciences and humanities, the role of choice in nearly every class or project, and the role of ownership through personal projects.