What Sets Lone Tree Apart?

Multiple components come together to set Lone Tree apart from other elementary schools. Please watch the video below to understand.

For more information, download the brochure attached below left.





Lone Tree Elementary Utilizes Highly Effective Teaching (HET)

In an HET classroom, students know what they are studying and why. The focus is on developing student understanding of important concepts, such as change, cause/effect, and interdependence. Curriculum begins with a location or event in the student's world; they investigate and conduct research to answer the big question, "What's going on around here?" State and district standards, and local learner goals are integrated into the content being studied. The key question is "How will what students are learning lead to responsible, productive citizens?"

Five Learning Principles:  
  • Intelligence is a function of experience
  • Learning is an inseparable partnership between the brain and body
  • There are multiple intelligences, or ways of solving problems, and/or producing products
  • Learning is a two-step process
  • Personality impacts learning and performance

  Nine body/brain-compatible elements:

  • Absence of Threat/Nurturing Reflective Thinking
  • Meaningful Content
  • Choices
  • Adequate Time
  • Movement to Enhance Learning
  • Enriched Environment
  • Collaboration
  • Immediate Feedback
  • Mastery/Application

Highly Effective Teaching (HET)

The HET model is a brain-compatible instructional model grounded in the biology of effective instructional strategies, and the development of conceptual curriculum.  


Lifelong Guidelines and Lifeskills

Lone Tree Elementary... A Magnet School has a specific  approach to providing a positive and productive environment.  As in society, successful schools have a code of expected behaviors that are communicated, modeled by all adults, and supported in students.  We create a secure, productive, environment where our students, families, and staff members can support each other and succeed. 

The very nature of our HET and magnet approach to learning fosters responsible citizenship. Behavior expectations are defined by our guidelines for citizenship.  Our staff is committed to this foundation and incorporating these characteristics into their educational planning.  The guidelines for  promoting this citizenship are identified in the five Lifelong Guidelines and supported by eighteen LIFESKILLS.

The five Lifelong Guidelines that we use in defining our goals for ourselves and our students are:

  • Trustworthiness
  • Truthfulness
  • Active Listening
  • No Put-downs
  • Personal Best

Our Eighteen LIFESKILLS define Personal Best and support our behavioral expectations and positive citizenship:

Caring ~ Common Sense ~ Cooperation ~ Courage ~ Curiosity ~ Effort ~ Flexibility ~ Friendship ~  Initiative ~ Integrity ~ Organization ~ Patience ~ Perseverance ~ Pride ~ Problem Solving ~ Resourcefulness ~ Responsibility ~ Sense of Humor

These LIFESKILLS and Lifelong Guidelines guide our learning community and promote responsible citizenship both in and out of school.


Microsociety at Lone Tree Elementary 

What is a MicroSociety School?
The MicroSociety school is an innovative design where children create a microcosm of the real world inside the school.  Each student has a role in running that world.  Young entrepreneurs produce goods and services, elected officials establish laws, CrimeStoppers keep the peace, judges arbitrate disputes and reporters track down stories.  All citizens earn wages in the school's "micro" currency, invest in product ideas, deposit and borrow money from "Micro" banks and pay taxes, tuition and rent.  Classroom connections are made throughout the day.

"Why Do I Need to Know This?"
It's a question students ask every day.  Many children see little connection between their schoolwork and the outside world.  For many students, good grades just don't offer sufficient incentive to succeed.  In the MicroSociety program, rewards are immediate and tangible.  Mastery of basic skills becomes necessary to excel as a lawyer, banker, legislator or entrepreneur.  Students are transformed from passive learners to active participants in their own development.  MicroSociety uses the brain compatible elements of movement, collaboration, choices, meaningful content, immediate feedback and mastery.

What about the Douglas County Standards?
Modern economy depends on a literate work force, as well as literate consumers.  The MicroSociety program provides a context that makes reading functional and fun.  In the courtroom, marketplace and newsroom, reading, writing and communication skills spell the difference between success and failure.  Math in the MicroSociety is a survival skill.  Hundreds of transactions occur during "Micro" time each day.  Math and financial literacy are elevated to survival skills.  Students recognize that they need financial literacy and arithmetic skills to buy and sell, create budgets, maintain a checkbook, and calculate taxes.  They need geometry to measure floor plans or design jewelry.  They apply algebra and statistics to create financial reports and spreadsheets.  Students in a MicroSociety live social studies and see science in action.  The program turns social studies into a living lesson in citizenship and government.  Science lessons come to life when students design new storefronts or when students manufacture products for the market place.

Program Impact
MicroSociety's co-operative, rigorous esteem-building model has the power to address many of the problems that plague American classrooms today:
•  Academic Achievement
•  Behavior and Violence
•  Attitude About School and Desire to Learn
•  MICROSOCIETY Citizenship, Service and Community Engagement
•  Economic Development