Curriculum

Curriculum

Lawrence North High School is a comprehensive 9-12 school designed to address the needs of all students. The curriculum contains a variety of course offerings in twelve departments including honors, gifted/talented, college level courses, and special education courses. Standards for Learning Teams work to facilitate curriculum articulation with elementary and middle schools and align courses with applicable state standards. All curricular areas are currently aligning standards with classroom practice; classroom practice with assessment; assessments with evidence of student work; and staff development with the needs of staff for research-based classroom instructional strategies to meet student-learning standards.

The Lawrence North Curriculum Guide, in addition to describing all courses and sequences in departments, identifies hundreds of careers and categorizes them into career clusters. Students are encouraged to take courses aligned with their interests and career choices. A separate Freshman School Curriculum Guide provides course choices unique to the freshman class. Both guides are distributed to students each spring and are posted on the school’s website.

Lawrence North and McKenzie Career Center (MCC) have a long history of cooperation through the High Schools that Work program, joint development of new courses and sharing of staff. Numerous Lawrence North students take advantage of the nationally recognized and award- winning vocational programs and academic courses at McKenzie.

Students have numerous opportunities to take honors level courses and to earn college credits while at Lawrence North High School. Advanced Placement courses are offered in foreign language, English, social studies, science, and mathematics. Students may also select Advance College Project courses through Indiana University. In addition to college credit courses, Lawrence North offers gifted and talented and/or honors courses in all academic departments. Such courses include calculus in mathematics, second year courses in biology, chemistry, and physics, a four-year Lyceum program in English, and Interdisciplinary Studies in social studies. Courses required for Core 40 and the Academic Honors Diploma are included within the range of course offerings. Lawrence North also supports community based learning through internships, cadet teaching, and the Advanced Learning Experience. Students in the Advanced Learning Experience complete an independent study project with the joint supervision of a Lawrence North faculty sponsor and an external coach from the community.

Lawrence North has seventeen special education teachers and twenty-four aides to support the needs of students with learning disabilities, communication disorders, and autism. In addition, visually impaired and hearing-impaired students attend Lawrence North. Special education students are provided opportunities for integration into general education classrooms. This inclusion is accomplished through the collaboration of special education teachers and general education teachers who teach several sections of English, science, and mathematics together.

In the fall of 2002, the first participants in a Spanish language immersion program entered Lawrence North as freshmen. Students in this program have been immersed in the Spanish language and culture since elementary school. In the early grades, the majority of their classes were taught in Spanish. As the students within the program progressed through the grade levels, more of their classes were taught in English. Middle school courses provided a blend between courses taught in English and Spanish. At Lawrence North, these students will be required to take two courses taught in Spanish, Spanish Immersion and World Cultures. The remaining courses will be outside of the immersion program with the rest of the student body.

Lawrence North has had a very diverse student population for many years and that diversity continues to increase as more students enroll each semester for which English is not their native language. Though the majority of these students speak Spanish as a native language, several students speak Chinese dialects, Korean, and languages of Eastern Europe. Currently, Lawrence North has one English as a New Language teacher and one aide who provide individualized instruction as well as support for the teaching staff. ENL students are placed in regular classes to assist in their assimilation into the American culture.

Several initiatives are planned or are under development to enhance the educational program.

  • Lawrence North has a fifteen-minute silent reading time every other day that is built into the daily time schedule.
  • Support for writing across the curriculum has been initiated. All teachers have had opportunity to participate in the development of a common rubric for departmental use.
  • The principal and counselors encouraged all students to select programs of academic rigor.
  • There has been an increase in communication with the feeder schools concerning essential skills for success in high school and the identification of gaps. These discussions have also expanded to assist in valid placement of ninth graders into appropriate courses. There is a need to further develop and expand these new initiatives.
  • Opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration have begun as a part of the freshman school and have expanded into grade levels 10-12 in math, English, science and social studies.
  • Basic Skills remediation classes for ninth graders are taught by certified staff and are coordinated with the ninth grade math,
  • Lawrence North is in the developmental stage of other smaller leaning communities within the school.
  • Several initiatives have been directed toward the alignment of our programs with post secondary education. These initiatives include participation in Project Seam and a collaborative program with IUPUI for classroom mentoring of pre-service teachers and a partnership with the Coalition of Essential Schools.