Lower School Notes

At the luncheon for 5th graders at Dr. De Jarnett's home

As we are asking our students to look back and reflect on what they have accomplished this year, it makes sense to reflect and share with parents what the Lower School faculty has accomplished this year. It also gives a little chance to brag, so here goes...

Curricular:

5th graders programming a robot

Mathematics

We have made the well-considered decision (in concert with the school's math department chair) to move to using the Singapore Math curriculum as the backbone of our Lower School math program.
We have moved to delivering a problem-based math curriculum using the “whole-small-whole” workshop lesson model that allows for small-group work followed by reinforced sharing after the initial lesson in grades one through five.
We began Singapore training for some classroom teachers and are committing to training all classroom teachers for next year.
After prototyping it last year, we moved to using the online ALEKS program in grades three through five to reinforce mathematical skills. It has been very well received by students, teachers and parents, as it has proven itself to be a motivator for students across the board.
This has been the second year of very successful after-school math teams for second through fifth-grade students.
We have moved entirely from the pull-out-of-class and to the push-in model of student support by our math specialist.
We have added support structures that allow us to meet the needs of all of our most able math students.

Language Arts

We have continued to add writing units using the “writing workshop” model in kindergarten through fifth grade. (That was the sole focus of our language arts work last year with our language arts consultant, Patty Reilly.)
3rd Graders at the Metropolitan Museum
This year our work with Patty Reilly has been in developing the “reading workshop” model, the most significant piece of which has been leveling, weeding and upgrading our classroom libraries, as well as doing regular Fountas and Pinnell-based reading assessments for our students several times a year.
Next year we will continue to work with Patty on developing more reading units, as well as to focus on clarifying our word study curriculum in first and second grades.
We now have consolidated language arts curricular leadership under Susan Abramson, working with our two language arts specialists, Mary Jean Alleva and Nina Goldweit.

We have a Scratch programming and Lego robotics curriculum ready to go for next year for grades three through five. (Scratch programming during technology time in third grade and Robotics with Scratch control as part of engineering and simple machines units in grades four and five) Lower School Technology Specialist, Christine Nicolaou, has been the prime mover in developing this curriculum. The training of science teachers, Erik Swanson and Beth Lemire has occurred this year during experimental after-school sessions with students.
All of the Lower School curriculum mapping units have been reviewed and updated this year.
In areas of both math and language arts instruction, teachers have developed a working understanding and an increasing facility with the “workshop” approach, which enables them to better address the needs of the full range of learners.
We are working on further refining the Opera staffing and scheduling to make sure that it is best scaled to our current fifth-grade numbers.

Affective Learning:

3rd graders painting above their heads like
Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel

Ruth Charney (one of the "founding-mother's" of the Responsive Classroom approach, now retired) spent two days with us again this year. Her visits have had a real impact on how we manage our hallway and lunchroom expectations and demeanor. Progress in this area and throughout the school has also come from our discussions of the book, The Power of Our Words.
We are speaking now with fourth graders about what they want their legacy as fifth graders to be. With the assistance of first-grade teacher, Zack Linnert, next year's fifth graders are excited about taking the lead in the Lower School-wide involvement in the NAIS (National Association of Independent School) 20/20 challenge, which will team our Lower School up with another school from outside the U.S. to come up with solutions to a global challenge.
Half way through the year, fifth-graders began to help “open doors” at drop-off. We are already training current fourth-graders to be able to start out at the beginning of next year.
One of Ruth Charney’s suggestions to us was to structure the end of the year differently, which we are doing this year. The essence is that students will be asked to review and revisit what they have learned over the course of the year and to do a structured reflection as they prepare to orient the students who will rise into their grade.
We have continued to improve the functioning of the our two Student Support Teams, (SSTs) to better address the needs of all students by developing effective teacher strategies for students, partnering with parents and keeping specialist teachers informed.

Communication:

Lower School Notes Blog currently has had a total of over 12,000 reads, or 350-400 reads per week, from parents, friends and extended family in 24 countries, despite the fact that it has been set up so it is not visible to search engines.
“Back 2 School Night Part 2,” our mid-year curriculum nights at all grade levels, was a real success. The focus was on teachers engaging parents in the kinds of learning activities that their children experience. Both parents and teachers enjoyed the time spent together.
We had a very successful Early Childhood Grandparents’ Day.

After School:

Thanks to Eli Goldberger, D-E's athletic director and varsity basketball coach, we had a very popular and successful basketball after-school program in our own Lower School gym. It provides a template for other programs that we might be able to run.
Participation in the Lower School Strings Program has tripled from 5 to 15 students over 3 years, making possible Lower School String Orchestra recitals.

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Below are video clips of last week's Chorus and String Ensemble recitals.