Welcome to the Cajal Family Portal!
Welcome to our new Cajal Families Community Portal, and Welcome Back to School!
Last year, we were moved by our families’ desire to start building more community with one another, so we are rolling out this new Community Portal to help our families stay up to date on what’s happening within the school and how they can get involved, and also to follow our exciting innovations work to modernize education!
Thus, we’re launching this new family portal to provide a “go to” space where you can find out what’s happening in the community and locate resources like information on the kids’ current project, the school calendar, the Family Handbook and more. We will post updates to the Cajal Families group as this continues to evolve
This site is part of a broader, ongoing effort, which we started this summer, to re-examine the software and human systems behind each of our many academic, clinical, administrative and family communications in order to replace the systems we’ve used to date with ones that incorporate the insights we’ve gained over the past five years into more scalable systems to better support us as we grow. These systems all have implementation timelines, learning curves, etc. so please understand that it will take some time before they are fully in place. For now, we will continue to rely upon Zoho for our family communications until we find an equally-functioned alternative.
Thanks for your patience!
Join us Friday morning!
Come see our new space at our Ribbon Cutting ceremony with Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff and Norwalk Mayor Bob Duff, and then stay for lunch in our fun new cafeteria!
Academic Updates
We’ll provide periodic updates here on the kids’ current project-based learning unit so you can follow along at home!
Check out the kids’ 1st project of the year!
Our first project will take kids on a deep dive into the social sciences and biology behind the human story as a whole, through an examination of great historical migrations. Differentiated to match the curriculum standards for each of our high school, middle and elementary school students, the kids will come away with a whole new understanding of how we come to be who we are, genetically as well as culturally.
Project-Based Learning FAQs
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Our team custom creates each project to meet the curriculum needs of the students then enrolled in our project. This process starts by looking at all the curriculum required under Connecticut state standards for each subject and grade level. Then we create a Driving Question that requires the student to master all of that content in order to create some end product manifesting their learning.
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Students work together through cohort-wide meetings, activities, field work trips and obstacle courses to move the project forward. We create opportunities for the students to collaborate throughout the process and in creating their end products. This is a carefully-scaffolded process, tailored to provide the level of support and collaboration that they are ready for.
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We develop our projects for the cohort as a whole, however each student's curriculum is tailored to their grade level and ability. Students learn all the curriculum they need to complete the project in ability-based groupings.
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Yes! Our students learn the same curriculum standards that they would in a traditional public or private school environment, but by using project-based learning we are able to authentically develop other skills that are essential to 21st century success, like project and time management, social collaboration and presentation skills.
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The best way to help support our PBL process is to let us lead your child through the process. We make a point of incorporating all the curriculum they'll need to answer the Driving Question, and where the kids struggle it gives us essential data on what problems they need our help to solve, and opportunities to partner with them in developing strategies to do just that. We've found that when parents try to "give their kids a boost," we may lose these key opportunities to help move them forward, and it may backfire as students start to worry about whether they'll meet mom and dad's expectations. If you are concerned that your child is struggling, please put a post into your family's private Zoho group to let us know. And, if you happen to have your own resources, connections or expertise that relate to the project, please let us know--we're always happy to have more resources!
Community Calendar & Events
We’ll use this space to post updates about events sponsored by Cajal or our parents for the community of currently-enrolled families, as well as information about our community outreach and education events as well. Check back for updates!
Upcoming Events for Cajal Academy Families
Visit the full calendar of events
(please note that we’re still adding in this year’s school calendar events)
Please Help Support our Admissions Events!
Please help us spread the word about upcoming admissions events, and consider dropping by to share your experience with prospective new families!
