The elementary curriculum at Prospect Ridge Academy is based in Core Knowledge, which provides a sequenced set of skills and content in the classroom, and is aligned with Colorado State Model Content Standards and Common Core standards.

The idea behind the Core Knowledge Sequence is simple and powerful: knowledge builds on knowledge. In the late 1970’s, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge sequence and professor at the University of Virginia, proposed that there was a core body of knowledge that students need to acquire and that the more students know, the more they are able to learn. Further, Hirsch suggested that students — being given specific guidelines on what they learn at every grade level and making them more “culturally literate” — would receive a more equitable, fair, and rich education.

The curriculum provides a rigorous, rich, comprehensive program that has shown success with students from a wide variety of backgrounds and has demonstrated a record of student achievement locally and nationally. For more information about Core Knowledge, visit their website by clicking here..

Staff utilizes the Math in Focus as our math curriculum for math instruction, which focuses on children truly mastering a limited number of concepts each school year. This program allows students to visualize mathematics and take their understanding from hands-on to pictorial modeling, to numbers. The goal is for children to understand the material on a deeper level; they are not just learning it for the test. Students in the same classroom may learn the concepts at different paces, but ultimately they all learn them and help develop their own solid foundation for further math learning.

All PRA elementary students participate in a weekly science lab, visit the library regularly, and actively participate in weekly music, art, technology and physical education classes.