Elementary is a child's foundation for learning
In our Primary School, our Kindergarten through second grade students are learning how to take part fully and successfully in a learning community, understanding themselves, and building a foundation of understanding for all of their future learning. With a strong, proven track record of success, our IB Primary Years Programme supports students in deep thinking about subjects, going beyond memorization to engage all of our students in learning that takes action!
Our Kindergartners start their educational journey with a focus on phonics and phonemic awareness, with an end of the year goal to deeply understand the alphabet and its sounds, understanding that reading, speaking, and writing are all related and reciprocal skills as they understand the graphemes (letter names), phonemes (letter sounds), and how we use these symbols to represent words. This work flows through the first and second grade as students are supported into becoming readers today, and leaders tomorrow!
Our students grow into readers as they work on related skills in rhyming, syllabification, word building, sound substitution, and more. They listen to stories and poems, seeking to build understanding through Ohio State reading standards, the IB Primary Years Programme framework, and our highly rated, award-winning ELA and phonics curriculum.
All students are supported in a classroom community as we start each morning with Responsive Classroom's morning meeting model, and every student hears their name in a positive way, shares something about themselves and their life, takes part in a classroom activity together, and reads a morning message with announcements for the day ahead. There's no formal academic hurdle for entry to this part of the day, so all of our students are able to start the day feeling successful and meeting Ohio standards for social emotional learning, and speaking and listening, as well as other related standards.
From there, students flow through their morning with an English Language Arts block, a mathematics block, morning snack and recess, and an International Baccalaureate Unit of Inquiry block. Students have a lunch and recess block, return to finish their Unit of Inquiry work, and then have an afternoon with three specialist classes that support not only the various Ohio specialist area curricula standards, but also I.B. and homeroom standards as all our teachers work to plan together across the curriculum to support the whole student and their achievement.
These specialist classes include: Spanish, Physical Education, Woods/Outdoor Environmental Education, STEM, Health/Social Emotional Learning, Music, Visual Arts, Library/Media Studies, and Genius Hour.
All in all, our school is a hive of activity and learning throughout the school day, and our students leave happy, connected, and knowledgeable. Check our our teacher blogs to see learning in action, or contact us to schedule a tour and learn more today!