At AAM, we are providing an education that emphasizes academic rigor as well as the essential skills of critical thinking and creativity.

We utilize an American standards-based curriculum at AAM. Following the State of Kansas curriculum, we use the United States Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics, the Next Generation Science Standards, and the C3 (College, Career and Civic Life) Framework for Social Studies State Standards, and the National Core Arts Standards.
Standards Based Curriculum

AAM was one of the first schools in the United Arab Emirates to use a standards-based curriculum, by adopting the Kent County curriculum from the state of Michigan. Over the past few years, the standards approach to creating curriculum and student outcomes has caught on, both nationally and internationally. Standards have become refined and changed to be more authentic and grade-level specific. The Common Core Standards have increased academic rigor and inquiry, along with identifying College and Career Readiness Standards.

Some resources:

• Common Core State Standards
• American Education Reaches Out

Constructivist Approach Toward Learning
The AAM faculty gives students regular opportunities to do far more than just memorize what they are told by teachers and books. For deep learning to occur, students need to deal with information and experiences, and put it together to make meaningful sense. Our students benefit in various ways from this approach:

• Children learn more, and enjoy learning more when they are actively involved, rather than being passive listeners.

• Education works best when it concentrates on thinking and understanding, rather than on memorizing.

• Constructivism concentrates on learning how to think and understand. Constructivist learning is transferable, so in constructivist classrooms, students develop organizing principles that they can take with them to other learning settings.

• Constructivism gives students ownership of what they learn, since learning is based on students’ questions and explorations, and often the students have a hand in designing the assessments as well.

• Constructivist assessment engages the students’ initiatives and personal investments in their journals, research reports, physical models, and artistic representations. Engaging the creative instincts develops students’ abilities to express knowledge through a variety of ways and also to retain and transfer the new knowledge to real life.

• By grounding learning activities in an authentic, real-world context, constructivism stimulates and engages students. Students in constructivist classrooms learn to question and to apply their natural curiosity to the world.

• Constructivism promotes social and communication skills by creating a classroom environment that emphasizes collaboration and exchange of ideas. Students must learn how to articulate their ideas clearly as well as to collaborate on tasks effectively by sharing in group projects. Students will exchange ideas and learn to ‘negotiate’ with others and to evaluate their contributions in a socially acceptable manner. This is essential to our students’ success in the real world, since they will always be exposed to a variety of experiences in which they will have to cooperate and navigate among the idea of others.

Al-Mizhar American Academy is an accredited member of the Council of International Schools and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which means that we meet a series of exacting standards as laid down by two of the leading bodies in the world of International education.

We are also regularly inspected by the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB).