Curriculum

Literacy is a complex, fluid, evolving collection of communicative practices that require literate learners to perform sophisticated literacy practices for a multitude of purposes. We expect our students to create, critique, and evaluate texts of various mediums; design, research, analyze, and share information; establish connections with diverse others through a variety of mediums; and to understand the ethical elements of these literacy practices in modern society.

Arizona’s ELA Standards are literacy skills that work together in a clear progression from kindergarten through 12th grade. Each standard builds on the standard that came before and towards the standard that comes in the next grade level.  

myPerspectives is the adopted ELA curricular resource for grades 7-12. myPerpsectives contains a variety of text genres of appropriate complexity that allows students to develop, practice, and master the depth and breadth of literacy skills in the Arizona ELA standards. Each unit in myPerspecives has an essential question that provides context for students to develop and utilize the reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language skills through a variety of performance tasks.  

Specific course offerings and pathways may vary by campus. Please contact your school counselor for specific details.

Arizona’s new vision of teaching and learning science integrates three interconnected dimensions of science learning to make sense of the natural world and understand how science and engineering are practiced and experienced. 

The 3-dimensions:

Disciplinary core ideas which develop learning progressions to coherently and logically build scientific literacy.
Crosscutting concepts which are ways to strengthen and support sense making and problem solving through a lens to gather evidence and support connections between contexts and disciplines.  
Science and Engineering Practices which explore, examine and explain how and why phenomena occur and how to design solutions to problems.

In this three-dimensional learning, students will ask questions, gather information, reason about that information and connect it to scientific principles, analyze and interpret data to support or defend scientific claims, and build their research, communication, and analytical thinking skills to be able to effectively communicate their understanding and reasoning.

AZSS 3-Dimensions Snapshot

The History and Social Sciences Department provides a comprehensive, quality program of instruction which encompasses strategies based on inquiry, and the ability to comprehend and analyze complex, historical text. A literate environment enables students to develop the skills, behaviors, and motivation essential to continue the life-long learning process. Core classes, such as World Studies, American/Arizona History, American Government, and Economics align to the Arizona state standards.

Students have the opportunity to take additional elective courses in the History and Social Sciences department. Please refer to the Course Description Catalog for those classes.

Specific course offerings and pathways may vary by campus. Please contact your school counselor for specific details.

Gilbert Public Schools offers a variety of language opportunities for students. At the high school level, we offer Spanish, French, German, American Sign Language and Japanese. Each campus’s offerings may slightly vary due to student enrollment and staffing. Students in Junior High (except South Valley Junior High), have the opportunity to earn high school Spanish 1 credit upon completion of the two year program and passing score on a district proficiency assessment.

World Languages are taught through the guidance of our Arizona State Native and World Language standards, as well as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.  Our curriculum aims to focus on proficiency based learning of the language in order for students to be able to listen, speak, read and write effective in the real world in the language. We want our students to be able to use the language they learn. We utilize a variety of resources that combines real world uses of the language, technology, authentic language and traditional learning to help our students. There is also an emphasis on the cultural component of language learning as well, where students see how there is more to the language than just words.

Specific course offerings and pathways may vary by campus. Please contact your school counselor for specific details.