Learning By Doing - BASIS Independent Silicon Valley

At BASIS Independent Silicon Valley, opportunities for students to see ideas in action – both in and out of the classroom, complement our content-rich, world recognized curriculum. We delight in giving students the opportunity to be able to live the material, and to begin to make connections to the world around them. Tapping into their five senses and exploring problems from new angles becomes routine for our students-but the thirst for knowledge persists.

Hands-on assignments, along with projects that elicit collaboration and participation, are present in all grades and subjects. Students receive support and encouragement to learn by doing, and most importantly, to seek out opportunities for knowledge acquisition outside the four walls of their classrooms.

Our robust middle school program, as well as the access to research and inquiry that is fostered by the completion of the Senior Project, exemplify this culture.

Field TripsInterdisciplinary WeekCollege Counseling Boot CampProject Week International Travel

Field Trips

Fields trips enable our students to construct their own learning in order to live successfully in the different environments that surround them. We have seen that field trips broaden the educational experience and make subject matter more relevant, especially as our field trips are purposefully crafted to sync with our curriculum. In middle school, students will typically take 2–3 field trips each academic year. In high school, this becomes a bit more dependent on the electives and specific science courses that students take each year.

Interdisciplinary Week

Each year in mid-May, we assemble teams of faculty to teach across their disciplines on a single topic. Students assemble in workshop style, and learn about topics from the different perspectives of their subject expert teachers. Interdisciplinary Week is the result of a deep desire to cultivate global thinkers who are critical and adaptable, analytical and compassionate. BASIS Independent Silicon Valley faculty help students make interdisciplinary connections between content areas and extra-curricular activities during the academic year, however this week devoted to intense collaboration and critical thinking creates an important and dynamic space for students to articulate new understandings in order to address consequential real-world issues.

College Counseling Boot Camp

The last week of school before Project Week, upper school students find themselves in College Counseling Boot Camp. Helping students plan for college is best done when it happens incrementally, deliberately and is grade appropriate. Therefore, the type of advice and level of attention that our students receive across the grades is quite different. For example, the Boot Camp for grade 11 is very intensive, as it suits the needs of rising seniors. Boot Camp for students in grades 9 and 10 includes relevant and grade appropriate activities to keep them primed for the future. Even though they are a few years out from the formal application process, college should not remain an abstraction.

College counseling formally begins for juniors in January with their first meeting with their counselor. As Boot Camp begins at the end of the year, we roll up our sleeves and begin tackling the work of applying to college. We discuss in great detail the ways in which admissions offices assess actual applications. The students begin to arrange their academic letters of recommendation, finalize lists of colleges to visit over the summer and gain a firm understanding of their upcoming calendar of deadlines in the fall. Since college essays are a genre unto themselves, we spend considerable time analyzing actual college essays. We do not give our students models or clear rules to follow as we do not believe there is a definable format for a college essay. Instead, we help them find their voices, and understand how an essay makes an impression on an admissions officer. In this way, our students are able to craft unique essays of their own.

Project Week

The last week of school means Project Week at BASIS Independent Silicon Valley! Project Week is an opportunity for students in all grades to work with their peers on multidisciplinary projects and to engage in a fun, new activity or trip with various grade levels. Students are grouped with Term Project Teachers for each project.

These projects challenge our students to be cooperative learners and to function as a team. We offer a variety of options each year, and strive to add new projects each year based on both faculty and student interest.

Here are just a few of the fantastic projects we have offered:

Boston to New York College Tour
Food, Culture and Identity
The Art of Good Conversation
Global Soccer: History, Politics and Culture
Modern Dance Workshop
The Nobel Journey
Fun with Physics and Photography
Domestic and International Trips: Alaska, Costa Rica, Europe, Peru
Big Basin Camping
Broadway Boot Camp
Authors and Innovators

International Travel

This year we welcomed students back from an educational trip to the Galapagos Islands to follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin. His studies in the Galapagos Islands represent diversity, and not just diversity of species, but diversity of inquiry and understanding. In many ways, what the Galapagos represents for the development of the human intellectual experience resonates with our core values and approach to education.

To embody Darwin in our travels, we took a cross-curricular approach, sending along a History teacher and an AP Science teacher to help connections made come full circle, finding relevance from one topic within another. Collaborative learning is indicative of the BASIS Independent Silicon Valley community, and we want our students to have an appreciation of the multi-faceted nature of studying and learning.