Special Areas - The Friends School of Atlanta

Special Areas - The Friends School of Atlanta
Special Areas
The co-curricular program allows The Friends School of Atlanta to extend and enhance our offerings for a progressive, well-rounded liberal arts education, with special emphasis on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) curricula. What is different at FSA is our commitment to infuse creative confidence, innovative and collaborative approaches, scientific curiosity, and Quaker practice across all disciplines.
FSA’s co-curricular classes are designed to nurture the mind, body and spirit, with weekly or bi-weekly sessions in:
Innovation Lab
Gardening and Environmental Education
Spanish and Latin
Visual Arts
Music and Movement
Creative Dramatics
Health
Physical Education
Innovation Lab features student-led projects designed to solve problems through invention and innovation to make the world a better place. The students have the ideas. The instructor provides the guidance, materials, tools and equipment (like our 3D Printer) for students to bring their ideas to life. Some projects are successful and some fail, but if they fail, they always fail forward!
At The Friends School of Atlanta, our gardens and green spaces are part of daily learning. Students plant, tend and study native species, track pollinators and harvest seasonal plants. These hands-on experiences build curiosity and responsibility while reflecting our Quaker values of stewardship: caring for people, places and the environment.
Our garden is
National Wildlife Federation
certified, a
monarch waystation
, a
wildlife sanctuary
and
Eco-Schools
certified for environmental learning
FSA offers Spanish language instruction to all students from PreK through 6th grade as a weekly or biweekly co-curricular class. Instruction focuses on vocabulary and grammar as well as the culture, history and geography of countries where Spanish is spoken. In the 7th and 8th grades, students may choose between Spanish and Latin, and foreign language instruction becomes a daily part of the core curriculum.
The Visual Arts program inspires students to heights of artistic expression and mastery they didn’t know they could reach! Incorporating both two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements in their work, students use a growing base of knowledge and skill to experiment with and practice multi-faceted techniques in highly varied and creative ways.
The FSA elementary music program is based on the philosophies of Orff Schulwerk, where students participate in music using their voices, bodies and minds to explore, experience and understand musical concepts. The use of poetry, songs, games, movement, and dance are tools for exploration and teaching basic music concepts.
The middle school creative dramatics program offers students an opportunity to explore and stretch their acting ability, learn how to more fully develop characters and build a deeper understanding of the world through basic stagecraft and cooperative storytelling.
FSA’s focus on whole person education places health directly at the center of what we do, emphasizing the integration of physical, cognitive, emotional and moral growth and development. Using Health Promotion Wave (HPW), a national, research-based, K-12 health curriculum with the ultimate goal of health literacy for all children, FSA seeks to ensure that all children learn how to make responsible, safe and healthful choices throughout their lives.
In the physical education program, students participate and practice a wide variety of age-appropriate sports and exercises to improve their fitness, skills and enjoyment. Activities emphasize health-related fitness and promote such other physical education outcomes as developing movement and motor skills, acquiring active living habits and fine tuning personal and social skills and cooperation.