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Academics

AT EVERY LEVEL, WE CELEBRATE INTELLECT AND REVEL IN INQUIRY

Our renowned academic program is fueled by educators who know and believe in their students’ capabilities.

Core subjects balance proven best practices with innovation, challenge with curiosity, and reach with resiliency. With unrivaled learning spaces, growth-promoting opportunities, and unyielding support, our expectations are great, and our love of learning is even greater. 

Charlotte Latin School

Learning needs change over time: it’s common practice to regularly evaluate what you teach (curriculum), how you teach (instructional practices), and how you measure student progress (assessment). As a TK-12 school, we have the luxury of establishing our foundation in Lower School and building on it. We will always seek out opportunities to improve our teaching and learning practices at all grade levels. We want to ensure that our curriculum is vertically aligned and that students are prepared to meet the challenges of each grade level and from one division to the next. Dr. Sonja L. Taylor
Associate Head of School

 

 

WHERE CURIOSITY MEETS PURPOSE

At Latin, curiosity leads, creativity thrives, and every student achieves excellence that fulfills them. From spelling their first words through writing compelling essays, our intentional academic program empowers students to think deeply, lead boldly, and pursue learning with purpose. 

Come visit. Ask questions. Be curious.
 

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Charlotte Latin School

Lower School

Learner's Journey Statement

At Charlotte Latin, we acknowledge that learning and growth do not typically happen in a straight line. Instead, a child’s educational journey often looks more like a winding path—filled with unique twists, personal breakthroughs, and different ways of processing the world around them. By broadening our teaching methods, we are creating more pathways and better access points for all kinds of thinkers. 

We communicate children’s progress using a competency-based report card. Our report card reflects the learning and growth of our students’ academic year - it shows what a child can do. It is our goal, as educators, for our students to be able to independently and consistently demonstrate grade-level-specific competencies and foundational skills through work that incorporates play, wonder, critical thinking, collaboration, clear communication, and voice. 

At Charlotte Latin, we know that play isn’t just fun, it’s how young minds do their best work! Play is a vital part of every child's learning journey, giving them a hands-on way to explore big ideas, ask questions, and solve real problems. Through structured and creative play, children practice social skills such as sharing and empathy, develop crucial self-regulation skills, and build the physical motor skills they need for everyday tasks. By honoring play as a powerful learning tool, we make sure school is a place where academic curiosity and childhood joy go hand in hand. Many times we refer to play as inquiry. We believe learning starts with a question. We use thinking routines like “What do you notice? What do you wonder? What if…?” Students learn best when they build their own understandings through play, mistake-making, wonder and exploration.

We develop students’ sense of belonging by using a Responsive Classroom approach, which includes practical strategies for teachers to use to build caring classroom and school communities. Some strategies include a daily morning meeting, interactive modeling, problem-solving conversation, classroom consensus building, and agreements. A responsive classroom enables students to take risks, learn from mistakes, and embrace a goal-setting growth mindset.  
 

A young boy in a blue t-shirt looks at a wall covered in colorful artwork and diagrams in the foreground, with more displays visible in the blurred background.
Structured Literacy Statement

At Charlotte Latin, we follow a structured literacy approach that is highly systematic, explicit, and evidence-based. In this approach, the teacher directly explains to students, based on their developmental age and stage, the six essential components of language: phonology, sound-symbol association, syllable instruction, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Research shows that structured literacy is essential for an estimated 40% of learners but benefits all readers, making it the best practice for classroom reading instruction. In addition, a structured literacy approach is diagnostic and responsive.

Phonology: hearing the sounds

Sound symbol association: connecting sounds to letters

Syllable instruction: learning how to break big words down into parts

Morphology: learning the meaning of word parts to expand vocabulary and spelling accuracy

Syntax: learning how sentences work to make meaning

Semantics: understanding the meaning of what is written; the ultimate destination of the reading journey
 

Math Statement

Our math instruction builds mathematical understanding through a concrete-pictorial-abstract approach to learning. This means students begin by representing numbers and their thinking with concrete, tactile objects referred to as manipulatives like counting bears, tangrams, and unifix cubes. Students move from depending on the concrete to being able to illustrate their thinking with simple math drawings and later with equations. Students are encouraged to explore multiple pathways for solving a math problem and explain their thinking. This method of learning creates problem-solvers who make connections to the world around them.

A group of children are engaged in a collaborative play activity, surrounded by a colorful and vibrant classroom environment filled with educational displays and materials.
TK Statement

Starting school is a big milestone, and every child reaches it in their own time! At Charlotte Latin, our Transitional Kindergarten (TK) program is a special "gift of time" for bright young learners who are ready for school, and are still growing in other big ways. In TK, we give children the room and encouragement they need to flourish—helping them build confidence, learn to share and make friends, practice self-control, and strengthen their gross and fine motor skills - from running on the playground to holding a pencil! It’s a gentle, joyful bridge that helps to prepare your child to step into Kindergarten with a sense of readiness, resilience, and an eagerness to learn.
 

3-5 Novel Study Statement

Teaching through novel study builds key literacy skills while fostering critical thinking, cultural awareness, and a love for reading. Novels offer a structured way for students to engage with a text, explore the world, and understand a character’s growth and feelings. Novels, when taught with the intent to foster thoughtful reflection and response, help students experience life from a character’s perspective. In some instances, students will see themselves in the character, and at other times the character serves as a window into other worlds. Novels tell the story of the kid experience.

Middle School

A group of young people are gathered together in a room with brick walls and exposed wooden beams, holding papers and appearing to be engaged in some kind of academic or educational activity.
Advisory Program

Our advisory program gives Middle School students the space to nurture their boldest, most compassionate selves. Through open dialogue and collaboration, students develop self-awareness, social awareness, relational skills, and responsible decision-making.

Middle School

Class Trips

Middle School grade-level class trips are designed to foster meaningful connections among students and faculty while providing hands-on learning experiences beyond the classroom. Beginning in sixth grade, trips to Atlanta, Quebec and Washington, D.C., open students to new perspectives and prepare them to engage with the broader world.

Middle School

Lamm Hawks Quest

Latin Leaders practice creative problem solving and take initiative with the challenging, team-building, hands-on activities of Hawks Quest, Latin’s signature experiential education program for Middle School students.

Middle School

Upper School

Innovation and Design

Latin’s fully equipped, state-of-the-art Fab Lab is where student agency and creativity come alive. Concepts of all kinds are explored across subject areas, including the arts, engineering, and environmental sustainability. Upper School students have all the space and resources to make mistakes, problem-solve, and develop ideas into prototypes that have real-world impact.

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Global Studies

Whether deepening their world language skills, expanding cultural awareness, or competing athletically abroad, all Upper School students cultivate international competencies through Latin’s Global Studies opportunities.

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College Counseling

Urban or pastoral, in state or out of state, Division I or Division III — what matters most are the dreams students carry, and the colleges that will help them achieve these dreams. Our College Counselors help students determine which colleges best meet their interests, goals and aspirations. 

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Charlotte Latin School

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