While you are watching the slideshow you will see the students involved in various academic subjects, as well as working on community service projects, acting in Assemblies, creating hands-on projects, writing for the Lower School Newspaper and enjoying time as a buddy or being "buddied" by an Upper School student. You will also get an idea of how closely the faculty works with the students and get a sense of the dedication the faculty has to their profession.

Please take a moment to view our Lower School Slideshow (requires QuickTime Player)

Lower School Philosophy of Education

      The Lower School students achieve mastery of necessary skills in an integrated environment that highlights and fosters the strengths of each individual child. We combine three objectives when we plan our curriculum: national standards-driven global approach as described in Content Knowledge: A Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks for K-12 Education (Second Edition) by John S. Kendall and Robert Marzano, a unique and effective reading approach, and a practical and instructional skills developmental approach. In keeping with the school’s mission statement, the students in the Lower School are exposed to direct instruction in a child-centered environment. There are many opportunities for our students to achieve mastery of specific academic skills. We then encourage them to extend these skills by applying them creatively. The educational philosopher A.N. Whitehead wrote in the 1920's that education needs: romance, precision (or technical skills) and generalizations. These words are as important today as they were then. Creating romance in education means that teachers must establish a classroom atmosphere in which the child loves to learn. That passion for learning happens when the teacher loves to instruct, to shepherd, to guide, and to challenge students. The excitement in the eyes of a student who has just decoded a difficult word, or mastered the times tables, or figured out a challenging math problem, or used a graphic organizer to set his or her thoughts down on paper, or written an exquisite poem, or mastered a foreign language is wondrous. The romance of education is about instilling a love for learning. With this in place, there should be no limits to what a child can learn. By precision, or technical skills, we mean mastering the basics. Students do need to learn to spell correctly, decode words and recognize the individual sounds within words. Students must learn their math facts. There is a foundation that must be built so that the structures above it may be firm, safe and secure.

     In the Lower School we stress a strong core curriculum. As the educational philosopher, Benjamin Bloom said, “If students miss one of the basic steps in their learning, they will never excel.” It is thrilling to watch a child take information he or she has already learned and apply it to construct a more sophisticated, logically sound concept. On the other hand, ideas in which steps have been skipped, like buildings that lack solid foundations, are likely to crumble. By generalization, Whitehead means that students need to analyze and break down the elements of their lessons; we, the faculty, then help the students learn to put the information back together again. Learning is about collaboration between teachers and students. It is about making information accessible to our students. We, as educators, must make the subject matter so inviting and manageable that the students feel that they can put their hands around the information. It becomes putty to the students—something that they can pull apart and constantly shape and reshape. This is the framework of our teaching. We also adhere to the principles of Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. He created the study of multiple intelligence, which teaches us that children possess nine modalities of learning and utilize their special areas of strength in adapting to instruction in class. We construct a sound core curriculum by keeping in mind that children learn in many different ways.  

       There is not just one type of intelligent child sitting in our classroom. There is not a typical Grace Church School student, and there certainly is not just one type of intelligence to consider. Our teaching methods include the use of as many senses as possible. The more modalities of learning used in a lesson, the more the students will appreciate what is being taught. Our experience applying many of Dr. Gardner’s ideals has made it easy for us to incorporate many of the principles we learned during our “All Kinds of Minds” workshops. “All Kinds of Minds” is an educational program that was created by Dr. Mel Levine, professor of Pediatrics at University of North Carolina. He is a leading expert on how children learn and how we as educators can recognize and accommodate diverse learning styles in our classroom. There is not one type of learner in our school, and there is not just one philosophy that molds the Lower School. But, if we had to say what is most critical in our philosophy, it would be that the students in the Lower School are led through our structured and textured curriculum with both a nurturing hand and a light touch.