The Rhoades School

Inspiring Curious Minds to Think Deeply and Live Courageously

Serving academically advanced children in the San Diego area since 1980, The Rhoades School offers a dynamic educational journey of discovery and exploration for students who are intellectually curious, creative, and eager to embrace new academic challenges and opportunities. Our culture of support and academic rigor teaches resilience and a love of learning.

Our Teaching Approach

The following research-based models serve as a framework for teaching practices at The Rhoades School:

Habits of Mind (Bena Kallick and Art Costa) are the characteristics of what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, that do not have readily apparent solutions. At The Rhoades Schoo, we integrate the teaching of 16 Habits of Mind in academic and social settings.

Renzulli's Three-Ring Model consists of three characteristics identified by Joseph Renzulli as markers of giftedness: above-average intelligence, creativity, and task commitment. Through our admission process we identify students with these characteristics. Once enrolled in our school, students use their creativity, commitment and intelligence to master our challenging curriculum in collaboration with like-minded peers.

SAMR Model (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) is a method of using technology to impact teaching and learning created by Ruben Puentedura at Harvard University. Rather than using technology to perform the same task that was done before the use of technology, we strive to engage students in new tasks that were previously inconceivable. SAMR is a continuum of technology use, with substitution and augmentation enhancing the teaching and learning process, and modification and redefinition transforming the process.

Social & Emotional Learning at The Rhoades School is grounded in our core value of intrinsic motivation and the CASEL Framework. Through classroom meetings and carefully planned lessons, teachers help students to learn emotional literacy, empathy, perspective and moral courage.

Thinking Maps is a language of eight visual patterns, each focused on a cognitive skill. We all learn in many different ways, however, research by Eric Jensen and Robert Marzano supports the belief that our ability to learn visually is greater than any of our other senses.

Understanding by Design (UBD) Framework is used in our school to plan curriculum that meets the needs of our above-average, creative, and highly motivated students. Our faculty uses the UBD model to first identify the content knowledge and skills that need to develop as a result of a unit, to determine acceptable evidence of learning and plan instructional strategies around the six facets of understanding: explain, interpret, apply, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.