Academics
Prescolare (Preschool)
CIJS is tremendously unique. It began its first preschool class in 2014 and has been successful because it puts children at the center of their education. CIJS creates an environment for active learning and exploration while molding Scholars into life-long learners.
Scuola Elementare (Elementary)
CIJS is an exceptionally distinctive school that places an emphasis on collaboration within the classroom through investigation and research. This promotes critical thinking and problem solving skills even with our younger Scholars.
Scuola Media (Intermediate)
CIJS offers an extremely distinguished middle school program where our scholars engage in purposeful exploratory group studies that address real problems, use real-world resources and allow experiences where students find multiple answers to their research based questions, all while collaborating and presenting their ideas to their peers.
Why Do Students Love Being At CIJS?
CIJS students recorded, edited and produced the video 🙂
Lessons Are Interdisciplinary And Project-Based
Interdisciplinary means several subjects are integrated into single projects. Rather than dividing lessons into “reading, spelling, writing, social studies, and math,” all subjects are integrated into every project through hands-on activities. Lessons integrate subjects in a meaningful way, just as they occur in real-world problem solving, rather than artificially isolating them. This allows students to make connections between the different subjects and the real world.
Literacy and pre-literacy, social studies (history, civilizations, geography), and math are taught through hands-on activities and projects. Projects are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests of the Scholar. Considered an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year.
Throughout a project, teachers help Scholars make decisions about the direction of study, ways in which the group will research the topic, methods to demonstrate and showcase the topic, and selection of materials needed for the work. Children act as researchers, guided by their teachers to find answers to their questions.
The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.-Loris Malaguzzi-
CIJS Bucket Filler Pledge
Scholars at CIJS spend time daily encouraging each other to treat their peers with kindness and respect.
I promise to be a bucket filler and not a bucket dipper. I will be kind, helpful, respectful, and treat others the way I want to be treated. I will try to intentionally fill a bucket everyday.