Academics

Curriculum

Welcome

As a school dedicated to providing an exceptional elementary education, Tenacre seeks to nurture and challenge students over a broad range of academic subjects.

Every child at Tenace is a full participant, a valued contributor to our vibrant community. In classrooms, on our playing fields, in art, music, and drama, our students are actively engaged in their own education. It is our belief that when every child has multiple opportunities to succeed, every child can and will succeed.

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The Schoolhouse: Tenacre's Earliest Years
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In the Schoolhouse, home to pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade, we strive to nurture and challenge each child, every day by providing our students with opportunities for social, emotional, and academic growth through hands-on learning activities. Our goal is to give children the tools they need to access the world and aid them in developing a strong understanding of self as a member of the global community. We do this by prioritizing social-emotional development while supporting children as they build foundational skills across academic domains. Our focus on building community, engaging in identity exploration, and creating lasting relationships with peers and adults alike creates an environment in which students are empowered to take risks and feel confident in their ability to face challenges. In the Schoolhouse, children embark on an educational journey that is part of an 8-year plan and engenders a lifetime love of learning. We believe that when children love learning from an early age, it defines how they approach learning at every age.
- The Schoolhouse has an overarching mission that encompasses the needs and provides growth opportunities for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade students
- A carefully planned academic and social-emotional curriculum progresses through all grades at Tenacre, with a particular focus on social-emotional growth in the Schoolhouse.
- The Schoolhouse teachers foster the Schoolhouse sense of community with monthly meetings in which all pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade students gather.
- The Schoolhouse teachers themselves meet regularly to collaborate and make sure their curriculum is connected in important ways.

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Public Speaking: Finding Your Voice
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Learning to speak confidently in front of a group is a life skill that Tenacre nurtures in all of its students. Starting at the earliest age, students gain experience standing up in front of groups and speaking. In pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, students serve as class leaders at morning meetings. Opportunities for these types of experiences are built into the daily experience for students in all grades. Throughout their years as a Tenacre student, students learn to find their voices as they participate in class plays and take the lead in grade-level classroom presentations and all-school assemblies. By the time students are in sixth grade, they have substantial experience speaking in front of groups. Sixth graders continue to hone their skills, presenting at Admission events and leading tours during Open Houses, volunteering for solos during the December Celebration holiday performance, taking the lead in making all-school announcements at assemblies and lunch, and participating in lead roles for the spring musical.

Class plays also represent an important role in helping students feel comfortable finding their voices. Tenacre’s philosophy is that all children have an active role in class plays, which allows them additional experience in expressing themselves on stage and in front of an audience. For more information, please visit our Class Plays webpage.

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Individualized Instruction: Small, Flexible Academic Groups
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Tenacre’s small group model offers immense educational benefits. The low student-to-teacher ratio allows every student to participate more fully; more participation leads to increased student understanding and confidence; and teachers can differentiate their instruction to meet the group’s needs.
Tenacre is committed to providing students with a strong foundation of skills, especially in math and reading, which are often referred to as the building blocks of an elementary school education. Tenacre creates small, flexible groups for instruction in both disciplines. Many schools have small groups, but Tenacre’s team teaching model, with the addition of the reading or math coordinator, allows a full-time teacher to teach and work closely with each small group. At Tenacre, students grow into joyful learners, ready to take the next step in their lives and education with confidence and purpose.

Benefits
- The opportunity to receive and give immediate feedback
- More hands-on tasks to build student understanding and confidence
- Teachers are able to motivate and build confidence through personal interactions
- Students build communication skills through increased participation
- Pacing can be adjusted to the groups’ needs
- Instruction is differentiated and targeted
Group Configuration
For reading, Grades 1 and 2 have four teachers (about 6 students per group), and Grades 3 and 4 have three teachers (about 8-9 students per group). In math, Grades 1-6 have three groups per class, with approximately seven to nine students per group.

Group Membership
Groups are constructed and adjusted based on assessment data and teacher observation of daily work. Students are grouped according to their knowledge and skills at a particular point in time and the skill set they need to acquire to demonstrate grade level proficiency. For example, second grade students solidifying decoding skills would be grouped together so the teacher could target the phonetic elements they need to review, while at the same time working on comprehension goals shared by all groups. In math, during a third grade unit on place value with numbers in the 1000s, students who are still working to build conceptual knowledge would be grouped together and focus on using concrete materials to support their work, while another group, still working on place value, would be applying their solidified knowledge to solve abstract word problems.

Faculty Professional Development

Summer Grants continue to be one of the most powerful forms of professional development. These homegrown projects harness teacher creativity and ingenuity to design curriculum, solve problems, and work collaboratively. Since the project ideas stem from school experience, they have direct relevance to day-to-day work and result in tangible gains for students. Below, please see a summary of this year’s grants.

For the summer of 2025, six GwinnLandry Summer Grants were approved, involving 20 staff members, with three faculty members involved in two grants.

Note: Grant proposals are submitted in the spring and must be approved by the Head of School and Assistant Head of School. Administrators participating in summer grant work do not receive stipends.

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Grade 4: Math Review with the new Singapore Math text, "Dimensions"
Faculty Participants: Leigh Bryan, Lauren DeLisle, Tom Doering, and Casey Connelly

The fourth-grade team, led by Leigh Bryan, Lauren DeLisle, Tom Doering, and Casey Connelly, refined the math curriculum to enhance alignment, pacing, and student learning. Key outcomes include:
- Revised Sequence and Pacing Guide to ensure full coverage of the Dimensions Curriculum and optimize instructional time.
- Unit-by-unit review to reduce or remove repetitive content, tighten focus on essential skills, and ensure vertical alignment with third and fifth grades (especially decimals and long division).
- Cross-curricular coordination with science to avoid duplication and ensure all skills are taught.
- Instructional enhancements, including standards-based games and ERB review materials targeting measurement, area, perimeter, volume, mean, median, and mode.
- Differentiated instruction supports new lessons and enrichment opportunities to challenge advanced learners.
These initiatives collectively create a more focused, aligned, and student-centered math program for the year ahead.
Grade 3: Creating a New Writing Unit
Faculty Participants: Rebecca Goddard and Katie Dubenetsky

Third-grade teachers Rebecca Goddard and Katie Dubenetsky reviewed and updated the third-grade writing curriculum, creating a new unit that provides more structure and focus on writing conventions while still encouraging creativity.

Using Units of Study as a guide, they adapted the third-grade fairy tale unit, which combines creativity with structured writing.

Unit sequence includes:
- Introduction to fairy tales and their characteristics
- Reading and comparing fractured fairy tales to originals
- Discussing author adaptations in fractured fairy tales
- Students selecting a classic fairy tale to reimagine
- Brainstorming changes and their effects on story elements
- Planning stories using graphic organizers (characters, setting, problem, solution)
- Drafting, revising, editing, and publishing stories
To prepare for the unit, teachers compiled original and adapted fairy tales for read-alouds, independent reading, and classroom/EPIC app access and created graphic organizers and templates. This unit strikes a balance between creativity and individual choice, while reinforcing conventions such as capitalization, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling.
Kindergarten: Focus on Literacy

Faculty Participants: Margo Portnoy and Megan Swift

The kindergarten team of Margo Portnoy and Megan Swift reorganized their literacy blocks to integrate word study and reading workshops into a more cohesive experience. This unified approach better supports students’ developmental needs while streamlining instruction. To ensure a successful transition, they reorganized materials, restructured lessons, and developed a year-long calendar of literacy activities.
Grade 5: Examining Social Studies Curriculum and Reviewing New Resources

Faculty Participants: Maggie Scannell and Jessica Kato

This project coincides with a schoolwide review of the social studies curriculum.

The fifth-grade history curriculum introduces students to key events leading to the creation of the United States, from early European exploration to the American Revolution, with a focus on power and perspective, while also developing strong note-taking and study skills. The History of Us has served as the anchor text, supplemented by other resources; however, after exploring TCI Social Studies Alive, used in fourth grade, the teachers found its predictable structure, comprehension checks, primary sources, visuals, and videos to be ideal for supporting all learners and reinforcing historical thinking. They then evaluated existing units, deciding which resources to retain or replace with TCI materials, while considering how these changes could enhance assessments and create more opportunities for project-based learning.
Grades 4–6: Review of Health Curriculum
Faculty Participants: Maggie Scannell and JT Tierney

Homeroom teacher Maggie Scannell and School Counselor JT Tierney, who are both part of the health teaching team, collaborated to conduct a thorough review of the existing health curriculum. The results of their work are outlined below.

Grade 5 Review
- Identified gaps; added relevant topics
- Aligned with MA standards & SEICUS national standards
- Ensured developmentally appropriate sequencing
Grades 4–6 Curriculum Revision
- Resequenced lessons: intro topics → Grade 4; complex topics → Grade 6
- Developed scope, sequence, pacing guides, and learning objectives
Instructional Planning & Resources
- Recommended whole-group vs. half-group formats for engagement
- Compiled free/low-cost lesson plans and slides
Outcomes
- Clear, developmentally sequenced health curriculum for Grades 4–6
- Structured topics, objectives, and resources for teachers
- Foundational knowledge is introduced early and revisited in complexity
Grade 3: Spelling Review

Faculty Participants: Rebecca Goddard, Katie Dubenetsky, Liz Amory, and Christina Grace

Grade 3 homeroom teachers Rebecca Goddard and Katie Dubenetsky, along with Liz Amory and Christina Grace, reviewed the Grade 3 spelling curriculum with an eye on continuity and progression from early grades, explicit lessons, and differentiation.

The third-grade team decided to adopt the spelling component of the FUNdations program, which is used in grades K–2. This will provide continuity from the instruction in K–2 and allow teachers to build upon the phonetic foundations, rather than introducing a new curriculum. The homeroom teachers completed the FUNdations training as a part of the grant. They plan to implement FUNdations spelling in two 30-minute weekly blocks. Students will receive systematic and explicit spelling instruction aligned with foundational reading skills. Reflecting on assessment results, spelling lessons will strengthen word analysis, multisyllabic decoding, and application of spelling rules. This consistency across the grade level is expected to improve spelling accuracy, reading fluency, and writing mechanics.