In City Schools of Decatur, our vision is: we will build the foundation for all children to be their best, achieve their dreams, and make the world a better place.

We recognize the critical role sciences play in ensuring that all children can be at their best, achieve their dreams, and improve the world. In our K-2 schools, students engage in science inquiry through EL Expeditions, STEAMY Fridays, and ARC units. Students have opportunities to ask questions, explore the world around them, and learn through a hands-on approach to science learning. Students in our 3-5 schools continue the journey through GA Science standards with their IB Units of Inquiry. Students make conceptual connections to central ideas that are globally significant. In the elementary years, science standards are focused on building foundational understandings in the areas of Physical, Life, and Earth sciences.

As students continue their science studies in the IB Middle Years Program at Beacon Hill Middle School, they engage in a 3-year sequence that includes sixth-grade Earth Science, seventh-grade Life Science, and eighth-grade Physical Science. Science at Decatur High School is based on a physics-chemistry-biology sequence that leads students over four years, from the simple to the complex.  

Beliefs of Effective Science Instruction-

We believe that effective science instruction must reflect and address real-world concerns. It is a rigorous and joyful process with multiple entry points that lead to an ever-expanding examination of why and how. 

• It is mentally stimulating.

• It is an ever-widening process of exploration in which students are able to ask questions and process information from multiple sources when discussing science.

• It is the development of comfort with hands-on and minds-on inquiry-based investigative work.

• It is engaging, transformative, and joyfully rigorous.

• It ignites students' desires to address real-world concerns through interactive activities and field experiences to empower change in the future

• It is accessible to all.

Click here to read the teacher and student's moves to achieve these beliefs.