Students participating in hands-on learning

School Day

The CICS ChicagoQuest school day has several unique features, as can be seen on our sample student schedule. The instructional day begins promptly at 8:00am ends at 3:30pm.

Morning Meeting

On Mondays and Fridays, the whole school attends Morning Meeting, where our identity as a school is reinforced, student and teacher achievements are celebrated, and school-wide topics can be discussed in a town-hall format.

Home Base

Students attend Home Base and “check in” at the beginning of the day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Home Base is led by “advisors” who work with the same small group (12-15 students) of students over a number of years. In Home Base, students build community, deepen their understanding of the school’s core values, and engage in service learning.

Advisors are responsible for advocating for their students, supporting and monitoring their students’ social and academic growth and development, and connecting with their students’ parents.

Block Schedule

We use a "block schedule" which results in students have 75 minutes in a class to engage in, explore, and delve into the course content.

Domains

We call our courses "domains" because they integrate related content, knowledge, and skills from different subject areas. We believe that integrated courses help students make connections across the disciplines and will result in more complex thinking.

Being, Space, Place integrates English/Language Arts with Social Studies. CodeWorlds integrates Math with Writing. The Way Things Work integrates Science with Math. And Wellness integrates social, emotional, and physical wellness. The Sports of the Mind domain focuses on digital skills and media arts.

Lunch

Students have 40 minutes for lunch, during which time they have an opportunity to eat, as well as move around (recess).

Advantage Hour

Every day, students spend time in mixed-age groups boosting and/or extending specific content knowledge and skills, based on the individual assessment results.

After School

We offer an after-school program that provides students with a space to engage in specific classes, based on student interest. Students also have time to do homework and receive an afternoon snack. The after-school program is fee-based, with a sliding scale.

May 3
We examined one-celled
organisms under a microscope today. We also looked at plant cells. Then we made sketches of the cells.

We learned about DNA, which is short for Deoxyribonucleic acid.

James D. Watson and Francis Crick with Maclyn McCarty*

Watson and Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA. I googled them after school and learned that they were building on the work that other scientists had done before them. It changed the way I think about how scientists work.

*(Photo: Marjorie McCarty) Lederberg J, Gotschlich EC, 2005 A Path to Discovery: The Career of Maclyn McCarty. PLoS Biol 3(10): e341. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030341

May 5
Today we put together models of DNA. Working with the models helped me to better understand the structure of DNA.

May 6
We've been asked by a team of game designers to provide information for a game that they are making about genetics! We learned how to use Punnett squares to understand the probability that offspring will have certain traits. I plugged in my parents' eye color and discovered that there was only a 25% chance that I would have green eyes - and I do! The odds were against me!

May 10
We have to write an introduction to the genetics game so that players have some background information before they start. I wrote about how the discovery of DNA has allowed today's scientists to be able to work on cures for specific diseases. This has been my favorite mission so far. I think I might be one of those scientists one day.