Elementary

Buncombe County Schools (BCS) has twenty-three Elementary Schools and four Intermediate Schools (5th and 6th grade). Our Elementary and Intermediate Schools strive to work collaboratively with families to provide a safe, caring, rigorous and engaging environment that ensures all students achieve at high levels.

  • Literacy instruction centers around a research-based developmental approach to building strong readers through a focus on the foundational literacy skills of phonemic awareness and phonics in early grades combined with grade level instruction in vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. As students progress from kindergarten to sixth grade, they engage in reading, writing and speaking about increasingly complex fiction and non-fiction text. Heggerty, Fundations, Geodes and Wit and Wisdom curriculum materials present a well rounded approach to teaching the state English Language Arts standards.

  • The goal of our mathematics instruction is to produce learners who comprehend concepts, operations, and relationships in mathematics as well as proficiency in computation and the application of those concepts. The Investigations series is our primary curriculum resource for grade K-5. In 6th grade, the Open Up curriculum is the primary mathematics resource.

  • The science curriculum is process and concept oriented, and children work to determine answers derived from everyday experiences. They also work to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena. Students in grades K-5 work through the Engineering Design Process in STEM Labs to apply what they have learned in science instruction.

  • Social Studies instruction guides students to identify, understand, and work to solve the problems facing our diverse world. Children focus on the unit of the family, community, state, and world to build this competency.

  • The Arts curriculum provides our students engaging experiences in appreciating the world around them through hands on art activities and music experiences.

  • Health and PE (Healthful Living) curriculum assists our students in making informed decisions to ensure they lead healthy and balanced lives.


Here is a full overview of North Carolina's Standard Course of Study.