THE PARAGON VISION

What is Paragon?

A World of Ideas That Makes A World of Difference
Across Eras, Continents and Disciplines

The unique Paragon Curriculum is based on the idea that we must impart to all children the content knowledge and academic skills that will provide them with the necessary intellectual capital to succeed in mainstream culture. Rather than teach history in bits and pieces in arbitrary sequence, Paragon’s fully integrated, chronological approach demonstrates to students how one idea builds on and evolves into another. The curriculum illustrates how sweeping cycles of conflict and resolution repeat themselves and leads students to understand how and why various world cultures have risen to power and prominence, only to be supplanted by new precedents set by others.

Studying history across continents depicts for older students, the manner in which many ideas develop at the same time in independent cultures unaware of the other’s breakthroughs. Students develop a larger conceptual picture of history and an enhanced awareness of the interrelationships of many areas of knowledge. Rather than memorize names, dates and wars in isolation, students recall the sequential circumstances surrounding these events and remember more readily both factual information and conceptual relevance.

The Paragon Curriculum is designed around eight ages of history or Human Eras, which constitute the monthly conceptual themes:

• The Ancient World 40,000 B.C. to 500 B.C.

• The Classical World 499 B.C. to A.D. 500

• The Middle Ages 500 to 1460

• Renaissance & the New World 1460 to 1600

• Kingdoms & Colonies 1600 to 1750

• Revolution & Independence 1750 to 1825

• Unification & Industrialization 1825 to 1900

• The 20th Century 1900 to 2000

Aligning Paragon with Local and State Standards

Although all Paragon students will immerse themselves in the historical, cultural and scientific worldview of the Human Era they are studying simultaneously with other grade levels, each grade will focus on a unique Essential Question. This enables Paragon to satisfy various local and state curriculum standards by highlighting those areas that students are expected to master at a specific grade level. Paragon accommodates specific content standards with monthly units based on an essential question that can address skills and content knowledge appropriate for the different grade levels. Paragon aligns its curriculum units with national, state and local district needs, freeing faculty to spend their time crafting creative and compelling lessons for the unique interests and needs of their students. Step-by-step daily lesson plans are organized around investigative questions, the types that have no easy answers and that have captivated thinkers for millennia.

THE CONTENT CORE OF THE PARAGON CURRICULUM

History and Social Studies

Social studies represent the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence and intellectual capital. Social studies constitute the organizing, chronological core of the Paragon curriculum precisely because it is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in nature. It provides coordinated, systematic study drawing upon such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, and sociology, as well as appropriate content from the humanities, mathematics, and natural sciences.

Social issues, such as poverty, crime, and public health, are increasingly understood to transcend the boundaries of disciplines, cultures, and nations. As these issues grow increasingly complex, the work to develop solutions demands an increasingly integrated view of scholarly domains and of the world itself.

Technology provides increasingly easy access to databases that are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary as well as to scholarship in many disciplines.

Paragon employs a constructivist, student-centered approach to hands-on learning.

Science

Science is also integrated into the Paragon Curriculum, which features biographies of great scientists, accounts of breakthrough discoveries, and detailed hands-on activities for students to stimulate interest in the scientific method. Mathematics as the language of science, and of economics, also constitutes an integral part of the Paragon experience for students. Paragon draws from and extends the morning session’s traditional core programs.

Technology and Computer Literacy

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for the purpose of solving practical problems, extending human capacities, and improving the quality of life. Paragon emphasizes the use of technological tools to facilitate and enrich learning. Students use computers to communicate via the Internet, to express themselves creatively, to solve problems, to organize data, to conduct research, and to explore mathematical and scientific principles through simulations.  Paragon lesson plans direct students to specific Internet sites on a regular basis.

Each classroom is equipped with a TV/VCR, Elmo, and LCD projector to support Paragon, which features film clips from classic and quality motion pictures to make history come alive for students. Elmo’s and LCD projectors in every classroom further enable teachers to engage students with the captivating images that support Paragon lessons.

The Arts

Rather than relegate art, music and foreign language to the periphery of the curriculum, Paragon’s design integrates them into its interdisciplinary center. Daily Paragon lesson plans are outlined with step-by-step instructions to ensure seamless implementation. Art, drama, music and dance interrelated to the core curriculum draw students into the center of learning.

Paragon’s purpose is to make the arts a vital component of a child’s education, while at the same time placing the strongest possible emphasis on the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The arts offer children opportunities to assimilate and apply what they have learned in ways relevant and meaningful to their experience. Their enhanced skills of communication, analysis and self-expression enable them to compete far more successfully with their traditional learning classmates.

Music

According to Plato, “Music...gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination... and life to everything.” The impulse to make music is ageless and universal. Music has the capacity to communicate volumes about an era and its people. Paragon conveys to students features of the music of different eras and composers by having them sing, dance, and perform with rhythm instruments.

Achieving academic excellence through Paragon :

Paragon is designed to increase the student’s ability to read, study, search for information, use social science technical vocabulary and methods, apply the scientific method to real world situations, practice reasoning through mathematical analysis and logic, and use computers and other electronic media. To develop this skill category, Paragon increases the student’s ability to use the writing process and to classify, interpret, analyze, summarize, evaluate, and present information in well-reasoned ways.

Paragon calls upon the student to work individually and in groups. Students learn about character, ethics, empathy and self-esteem implicitly by studying the world’s greatest thinkers, both canonical and unsung, and by stepping into the shoes of great historical figures, both real and imaginary. Paragon students contemplate questions that have captivated thinkers for millennia: What makes a hero? What makes me unique? How can we learn from the past? How do we apply that knowledge to the future?

By studying the history of human culture, students learn implicitly about values and ethics that transcend time and place:

• Individual beliefs/majority rule
• Obeying the law/the right to dissent
• Cultural variety/cultural assimilation/uniformity
• Community progress/individual liberties
• Individual rights/public safety
• Celebrity vs. Heroism

THE features OF THE PARAGON CURRICULUM

The Paragon Curriculum features the following aspects of the best teaching and learning practices worldwide:

Integrated interdisciplinary work

• Allows for more efficient use of time for students and teachers.
• Provides mechanism through project-based learning for integrating newly acquired knowledge from different disciplines.
• Applies skills developed in reading, writing and mathematics to relevant, real-world situations.
• Enables students to develop accelerated academic, aesthetic and technical skills.

Essential Questions - the Paragon Framework

• Reflect the grand, sweeping patterns in the evolution of cultural worldviews.
• Represent a breakthrough in how people see themselves, their purpose or their relation to the physical world. Also exemplifies a transition in awareness of the material world or the universe.
• Define a prevailing worldview.
• Illustrate a “great” idea with relevance, significance and endurance that transcend time and place.
• Address the “so what” question that we would have students consider in their writing, discussions, and presentation.
• Amplify the role of common people who become heroes in developing ideas, inventions and art that become mainstream social norms.

Paragon instills and cultivates the following:

• Decision making - identifying and struggling with complexities, solving problems and thinking critically, developing creativity, rather than strict conformity to conventional practices;
• Self-direction and personal initiative
• Strong interactive skills- cooperation, networking, teamwork and information pathway knowledge.
• Responsibility for learning, identification of goals, development of a plan, gathering information, and implementation of a plan.
• A sense of awe and a passion for inquiry.
  Paragon Curriculum is practical because it is meaningful.
• Students learn connected networks of knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes that they will find useful both in and outside of school.
• The significance and meaningfulness of the content is emphasized both in how it is presented to students and how it is developed through activities.
• Classroom interaction focuses on sustained examination of a few important topics rather than superficial coverage of many.
• The teacher is reflective in planning, implementing, and assessing instruction.
• All disciplines, including math and science, the liberal arts, fine arts, social sciences, foreign language and physical education weave strands of connection between different ways of knowing.

Paragon teaching and learning are powerful because they are value-based.

• Powerful Paragon teaching considers the ethical dimensions of topics and addresses controversial issues, providing an arena for reflective development of concern for the common good and application of social values.
• Students are made aware of potential social policy implications and taught to think critically and make value-based decisions about related social issues.
• Rather than promulgate personal, sectarian, or political views, Paragon teachers make sure that students:1) become aware of the values, complexities, and dilemmas involved in an issue; 2) consider the costs and benefits to various groups that are embedded in potential courses of action; and 3) develop well-reasoned positions consistent with basic democratic social and political values.

Paragon Curriculum teaches to the Multiple Intelligences.

Multiple Intelligences, a term coined by psychologist and author, Dr. Howard Gardner, refers to seven domains of ability in which students can excel:

• Linguistic Intelligence- (speaking, reading, explaining things to others.)
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence- (measuring recipes, balancing a checkbook, estimating distance.)
• Spatial Intelligence- (drawing, finding one’s way around a room, picturing something in the mind’s eye.)
• Musical Intelligence- (listening to music, singing, playing an instrument)
• Kinesthetic Intelligence- (playing sports, making things by hand.)
• Interpersonal Intelligence- (having friends, working or playing with a group)
• Intrapersonal- (enjoying time alone to think to wonder and to imagine.)

The afternoon session, the interdisciplinary Paragon Curriculum, cultivates all seven of these multiple intelligences, along with an eighth, the “Integrative Intelligence,” which refers to the ability to make connections across disciplines. To illustrate, a Unit 3 Medieval lesson for fourth grade in the Paragon Curriculum features a lesson on Robin Hood. During the 2-hour session:

• Students read an excerpt from the classic version of the story, discussing the “old-fashioned” language features (Linguistic Intelligence.)
• Students then view and compare film clips of the folk hero’s adventures (Linguistic and Spatial Intelligence.)
• Students make a storyboard (comic strip for video production) of the sequence of events in the reading selection, dividing into groups to make tableaux in dramatic poses (Linguistic, Spatial, Interpersonal and Kinesthetic Intelligences.)
• Students learn to make a 16-piece thumbnail sketch of a human figure (Spatial Intelligence) and debate the contradictions of Robin Hood being both a hero and an outlaw (Linguistic, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Intelligences.)