Your child’s Blyth Academy journey continues in our Foundations Program, where experienced and empathetic faculty build on the students’ academic success, while adding a complete and comprehensive life skills curriculum.
The Foundations Program is unique to Blyth Academy. It combines the development of important life skills with the Ontario Ministry mandated academic curriculum. In order to best prepare students for the road ahead, the program has been developed for students in Grades 9 and 10 to enrich and enhance their understanding of such important skills as:
Managing one’s wellness
Study skills
Financial literacy
Creative thinking
Planning & time management
Community services
Personal nutrition
Improving academic achievement
This program will allow our students to move to the rigorous academic challenges of Grades 11 and 12, armed with an excellent education, as well as the practical skills necessary for success after high school, and the ability to think independently, analytically, and critically.
FOUNDATIONS PROGRAM ACADEMICS
The academic year of the Blyth Academy Foundation Program is divided into four terms of ten and a half weeks. This cutting-edge restructuring of the traditional academic school year has dramatic benefits for the student. Our Foundations students will enrol in only two courses per term, as opposed to a more traditional semester setting (four courses a semester) or a full-year setting (eight courses daily spanning the entire academic year). This structure allows our students to manage their academic workload much more effectively. Two-hour classes, taken five days a week, provide more time for in-depth review and for individual attention from the teacher to our students on an ongoing basis.
Students select their courses at the start of the school term and are given their schedule and room assignments. The life skills portion of the Foundation Program is taught in their third “spare” period.
Technology in the Classroom
Using technology comes so naturally to children today, and introducing a digital learning environment encourages them to embrace learning in ways that are familiar. Within our Foundation Program, students are being introduced to Edwin, educational software designed to enrich their learning experience. With their own personal digital devices, students can view their textbooks as well as submit assignments while at school, at home — anywhere there is Wi-Fi. They also have access to a library of supplementary learning in the form of articles and videos that compliment the units they are learning in-class; they can easily research content that has been filtered for them, by subject matter. Edwin is not only a learning tool for students, it gives our teachers new opportunities to make connections to students through exciting material that leads to new, open discussions.
Blyth Academy is ministry inspected and adheres to all provincial standards, including the provision of an Ontario Provincial Report Card and official transcripts to post-secondary institutions. Blyth Academy follows the Ontario curriculum. To read more about the Ontario Curriculum, please select a Grade level below:
PHILOSOPHY OF THE FOUNDATIONS PROGRAM
The Foundations Program seeks to provide a unique offering to students in Grades 9 and 10 that challenges the traditional organization of curriculum development and delivery in the intermediate grades. Traditional academics at Blyth, unlike at many schools where the disciplines stand isolated from one another and the real lives of students, will be fully integrated with actual experience. In taking this approach the Foundation Program ensures a curriculum that changes with the times and thus remains perpetually interesting and relevant to students each and every year.
The Foundations Program, our Academy wide offering of Study and Life skills in partnership with community organizations, provides unparalleled opportunities for personal and academic growth within the intermediate division. Each program is specifically tailored to the environment at each campus.
Grade 9 and 10 students at Blyth Academy will benefit from the way in which the Foundation Program integrates the disciplines of Math, Science, English, and the Social Sciences and makes them relevant to their lives. Students will derive a more meaningful educational experience by explicitly examining the way in which what they learn in their traditional classes impacts their daily lives. In so doing, the Foundations Program will produce students with a greater sense of self, their peers and the world around them.
Students who successfully complete the Foundations Program will move into their Senior years at Blyth Academy, strongly connected to the mission of the school and its three truths:
- Care and empathy for students on academic, intellectual and personal levels is essential to success.
- Brilliant hands-on, experiential teaching in small classes engages students and produces the best results.
- Blyth schools produce well-rounded, university-ready and life ready students by providing a full extracurricular program as well as community-involvement opportunities in their neighbourhoods and around the world.
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OTHER BLYTH ACADEMY PROGRAMS
