Helix has set high standards for our students!
We provide support for our students to achieve these standards!
Helix provides support for our students to reach these high standards.
California Standards Test
Standards found at Helix Charter High School
Standards in Education for the State of California Return to top
- California Assessment and Accountability
- California High School Graduation Requirements
- California State Curriculum Frameworks
- Content Standards for California Public Schools
Reading is Important Return to top
- California READING List
- Recommended Literature: Kindergarten through Grade 12
- STAR Reading Level Book List
Helix Charter High School's Guiding Vision:
Helix is a college preparatory charter high school dedicated to supporting each student in the achievement of his or her highest academic potential. The educational focus is designed to foster each individual’s capacity for self-development and personal responsibility to prepare the student for success in adult life, college, and career. Helix will provide the academic background and experience that will prepare students to perform successfully in college without remediation.All Helix graduates will be prepared to enter college either right after high school or later in life.
All students will enjoy a range of educational choices developed to give them flexibility to design a personal program of study. Student needs and interests vary, so the time students take to complete their program of study will vary; some students will take more than four years to graduate, some will take fewer.
Helix will provide all students the tools and environment to become highly skilled, productive members of society, as well as self directed learners.
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Helix’s Five Fundamental Principles(The five fundamental principles have helped the stakeholders of Helix to stay focused on the education that is necessary for all Helix students.)
1. All students are connected to school and learning through greater personalization and interaction among peers and adults.
2. All students are active learners; all teachers are facilitators of student learning.
3. All students demonstrate powerful learning through the production of significant work; all teachers design powerful curriculum.
4. All students, through interdisciplinary work, transfer knowledge to real-world situations.
5. All students achieve and stay in school because they see a connection between schoolwork and the world of work.How Helix Began Developing Rubrics
Helix’s writing rubrics were designed by representatives from SDSU's Writing and Rhetoric department, middle and elementary school teachers, and Helix teachers. After examining writing from second grade students to college sophomores, the representative teachers created a rubric they believed could be used to evaluate writing across the wide range of skill level.
The rubrics are used by all teachers on the Helix campus who assign writing projects. Teachers have an opportunity to collegially score 6-8 times a year, which insures the rubrics and standards are kept at a constant. Students need to achieve a specific score on the rubric for each of their writings (for instance, 9th graders must reach a 3). Students not reaching the target skill level will rewrite the paper until the standard is met. Some students need to spend extra time after a quarter course ends in an Intersession class to rewrite any papers not up to their target skill level. The Intersession class allows students this make-up opportunity, without repeating an entire class in the summer.
This does mean that Helix teachers grade many papers; however, Helix teachers are dedicated to the concept of keeping the standards high and to teaching the skills needed to reach those standards. Student results make it worth the effort. The Quarter System allows smaller class size and only three classes per teacher, so the number of papers per teacher is less than if teaching in a traditional six-period day. English teachers have recently decided to have common due dates on all research papers to make collegial scoring easier.All departments at Helix have developed their own set of standards and rubrics, which are shared with students and parents at the beginning of each new class.
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