Curriculum

Philosophy

Our curriculum is enhanced with special consideration for our unique identity as a Catholic School. St. Francis School is committed to promoting thinking and reasoning, and addressing the development of our students' moral, cognitive, physical, social and aesthetic spheres:

• We teach a differentiated curriculum that challenges all students
• Teachers attend in-services regularly, and are aware of current trends and issues in education
• Educational goals are created with consideration toward the Oregon Department of Education and the Bend/LaPine School District

What is a Differentiated Curriculum?

The goal of St. Francis is to meet the needs of every student. One way to do this is to employ gifted education techniques in the classroom. Gifted education techniques appropriately challenge high achievers as well as emerging learners. It is not summarily assigning massive amounts of homework or teaching to the top 5%.

To meet our goal of challenging all students, we have been developing the gifted education technique of a differentiated curriculum. St. Francis School’s differentiated curriculum provides students with multiple options for acquiring information and making sense of ideas. We are incorporating concepts and general themes with flexible, small group instruction. Our learning philosophy is one aspect of education that contributes to the mental, physical, social and spiritual development of our students.

Bang for your Tuition Buck

As you can see in the information below, part of how our school is able to excel at preparing our students--faith and academics--involves an advantage in total instructional time provided.

Grade Level	Required hours - Public school	St. Francis actual hours
Preschool	N/A	N/A
Kindergarten	405 hours	1044.5 hours
Grades 1-3	810 hours	1044.5 hours
Grades 4-8	900 hours	1044.5 hours
Grades 9-12	990 hours	N/A

Notes:
Full school days = 6.17 instructional hours.
Half school days = 3.75 instructional hours.