Academics at PS 15

​PS 15 uses a wide range of resources to accommodate our learners at every level. We plan curriculum using a variety of approaches, but most student learning focuses around a content-based topic that involves cross-subject work resulting in academic and creative projects.

All academic work at PS 15 is aligned to the Common Core Standards in addition to state and local standards.

We use the Go Math curriculum for mathematics instruction, which is an engaging and interactive problem-solving curriculum that challenges students to look at not just one strategy to solve math problems.

For ELA, we use the Comprehensive Literacy approach and the Teachers College Reading and Writing Curriculum. Students participate in a variety of literacy activities as outlined by the Balanced Literacy chart below.

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​PS 15 teachers write unique content-specific Magnet Units, which use the Gold Standard of Project Based Learning (Buck Institute) as the core of those units. These units are intended to be transdisciplinary. Whereas subjects such as Writing, Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies have been traditionally taught in isolation, interdisciplinary studies find the intersections between two of those studies and transdisciplinary studies seeks to find the intersections between all of these subject areas. Teachers writing the PS 15 Magnet Units practice a transdisciplinary approach, seeking to find natural crossover between all of the subject areas under a topical umbrella.