Another primary goal is to make sure that the curricular benchmarks are challenging students to acquire and apply higher order thinking skills. Following the latest educational trends, the school has implemented a new format that requires teachers to break down their planning and instruction activities into three main sections/stages: Accessing Prior Knowledge; Teaching New Information; Application and Generalization.
In addition, there is a school-wide campaign to focus on thinking skills, targeting one specific skill per week. Every week, teachers from one department are responsible for teaching the thinking skill in their content area, and all other subject area teachers reinforce that same skill in their classrooms during that week. Students are thus, consistently engaged in learning and applying a thinking skill, and they are able to sense the school-wide commitment to helping them improve those skills.