Curriculum Overview

The curriculum of Valiant Cross Academy is aligned with the Alabama College and Career Readiness Standards and is designed to support the academic growth of all scholars. Instruction emphasizes mastery of standards while allowing flexibility to meet individual learning needs. Core content areas, including Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Science, are integrated to create an engaging and meaningful learning environment that encourages critical thinking, responsibility, and ownership of learning.

The curriculum is not limited to a single textbook or sequence but incorporates a variety of differentiated instructional methods, including project-based learning.  Faculty remain informed of current educational trends and best practices through ongoing professional development and apply this knowledge to prepare scholars for future academic success.

VCA Academic Vision of Excellence (Math/Science)

At Valiant Cross Academy, mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They notice the form and meaning of possible solutions and carefully plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider comparable problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Mathematically proficient scholars can explain correspondences between equations, verbal descriptions, tables, and graphs or draw diagrams of important features and relationships, graph data, and search for regularity or trends. Mathematically proficient students continually check their work and ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches as well.

  • At Valiant Cross Academy, mathematically proficient students understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments. They make conjectures and build a logical progression of statements to explore the truth of their conjectures. They are able to analyze situations by breaking them into cases and can recognize and use counterexamples. They justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and respond to the arguments of others. They reason inductively about data, making plausible arguments that take into account the context from which the data arose.
  • Mathematically proficient scholars are also able to compare the effectiveness of two plausible arguments, distinguish correct logic or reasoning from that which is flawed, and— if there is a flaw in an argument—explain what it is. Scholars at all grades can listen or read the arguments of others, decide whether they make sense, and ask useful questions to clarify or improve the arguments.

At Valiant Cross Academy,  mathematically proficient students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the right signs consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, checking their work, and labeling their work to provide clarity. They calculate accurately and efficiently, and express numerical answers with precision.

VCA Academic Vision of Excellence (ELA/SOCIAL SCIENCE)

At Valiant Cross Academy, scholars can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines, and they can construct effective arguments and convey intricate or multifaceted information. Likewise, scholars are able independently to discern a speaker’s key points, request clarification, and ask relevant questions. They build on others’ ideas, articulate their own ideas, and confirm they have been understood. Without prompting, they demonstrate command of standard English and acquire and use a wide-ranging vocabulary. More broadly, they become self-directed learners, effectively seeking out and using resources to assist them, including teachers, peers, and print and digital reference materials.

At Valiant Cross Academy, scholars adapt their communication in relation to audience, task, purpose, and discipline. They set and adjust purpose for reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language use as warranted by the task. They appreciate nuances, such as how the composition of an audience should affect tone when speaking and how the connotations of words affect meaning. They also know that different disciplines call for different types of evidence (e.g., documentary evidence in history, experimental evidence in science).

At Valiant Cross Academy, scholars are engaged and open-minded—but discerning—readers and listeners. They work diligently to understand precisely what an author or speaker is saying, but they also question an author’s or speaker’s assumptions and premises and assess the veracity of claims and the soundness of reasoning.

At Valiant Cross Academy, scholars regularly cite specific evidence when offering an oral or written interpretation of a text. They use relevant evidence when supporting their own points in writing and speaking, making their reasoning clear to the reader or listener, and they constructively evaluate others’ use of evidence.

Internet Safety and Technology Policy and Procedures

At Valiant Cross Academy, we take internet safety seriously.

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