Fostering Curiosity, Creativity, and Community

The Lower School literacy program values how we teach as much as what we teach, with community at the center. Classrooms are built on high expectations, strong relationships, and respect for diverse learners. Guided by the Teachers College workshop model, students read, write, and share ideas together, seeing literacy as a meaningful, shared process. Teachers provide targeted support through small group instruction, helping students build skills in reading, writing, and expression. Over time, students grow as confident, thoughtful readers and writers who appreciate language and engage with increasingly complex ideas.

The social studies curriculum is organized around “big ideas” that students encounter with increasing complexity as they move through the Lower School. How communities allocate resources can guide a 1st grade study of houses and homes, and similarly focus a 4th grade study of World Peace Games. By organizing units around questions first and then skills and content, we communicate to students that learning about the past is inquiry-based: by asking and exploring good questions, we delve deeper into the topic. 

A well-rounded education includes extensive exposure to art and music, which helps children to make connections across disciplines, to develop interests and skills in a number of subjects and to build a rich, expansive world view. Faculty trained in art and music education provide an integrated, vertical curriculum and teach in spaces specifically designed for these subjects. The time and space given to art and music reflect the high value we place on these curricular areas as part of the Lower School experience and helps children learn to express themselves outside of their classroom work. In fifth grade the art and music curriculum culminates in a year-long, integrated “Creating Original Opera” program in which students write, compose, design and perform their own opera. 

Health and Wellness classes provide a time for students to be active, to learn to problem-solve, to collaborate and to develop motor and planning skills in the setting of traditional and nontraditional games. There is always an emphasis on having fun and learning good sportsmanship. 

Technology is embedded into all areas of the curriculum, with specific skills at each grade level. Lower School students use technology in ways that support creativity, critical thinking, and sharing ideas in new and flexible ways. iPads and laptops are readily available for students. SMART boards, as well as wireless classrooms, integrate the use of technology into all aspects of the classroom. 

The concept of a larger world and the need to help others are introduced in the Lower School. Children collect food and toys for the needy and participate in relief efforts. Students who want to run a fundraising campaign must first present their idea and plan to a Senior Leader of the Fundraising Council, which connects them to Upper School students who are adept at fundraising and who help them polish their plan.