2 3 INDEPENDENT LEARNER Alexandra and three of her first grade classmates are engaged in some serious negotiation around a pile of paper plates, pipe cleaners, foam trays, paper clips, and tape. They’ve been tasked with designing a container with a handle that will carry at least four apples using only the materials provided. Their initial design plan isn’t working as expected and they all have different ideas as to how to fix it. After much discussion and some trial and error, the group completes their design and successfully carries not just four, but ten apples in their container. Alexandra Hands-on, experiential lessons are commonplace in ACDS classrooms at all grade levels. From center time in Kindergarten, to Colonial Day in second grade, to participating in a Silk Road simulation in fifth grade, to building a SeaPerch Remotely Operated Vehicle in sixth grade, to using a room-sized coordinate plane to create human graphs of linear functions in seventh grade, students are active and engaged participants in their learning. INDEPENDENT LEARNER Walk into any ACDS classroom and you’ll see students actively developing academic, athletic, artistic, and interpersonal skills. Guided by experienced and dedicated teachers, students are challenged to explore, reflect, collaborate, and solve open-ended problems.