Respect for each other, care of the environment, and a love of learning are the overall expectations. We provide a prepared environment, prepared teachers, and freedom in learning, balanced with responsibility.

Social and Academic Goals:

• Work independently & responsibly
• Work in small & large groups cooperatively
• Develop ability to speak out as well as wait turns & listen to others

Academic Development Goals:

• Each will make an effort to do his/her own best work
• The unique styles of each child will be respected & accommodated as much as possible
• Each will be involved in his/her own education by taking responsibility for time and work and by self assessing and personal goal-setting.

The Language Arts:

We use a phonetic base in learning to read, while also saturating the environment and curriculum with print to be read for meaning.

Reading:

• Skills, strategies, speed and smoothness, comprehension & gaining information, vocabulary, literary analysis, confidence, appreciation of different types of literature (folk tales, poetry, adventure, fantasy, history, biography, non-fiction, etc.)
• Reading related to culture subject: guided reading, discussions, meaning-based books, books related to individual interests.
• Literary Groups: shared inquiry discussions, interpretive questions, reading aloud, meaning-based activities presentations.
• Sustained silent reading – individual interest: reading logs.

Writing:

• Skills: spelling, capitalization, punctuation, alphabetizing, descriptive language, dictionary skills, reference books, research and note taking, synonyms and antonyms, homonyms and homophones, compounds, contractions, abbreviations, word usage & parts of speech, sentences & phrases, development of paragraphs, dictation, manuscript or cursive handwriting.
• Writer’s Workshop (more skills): fluency, proofreading, editing, revising, conferences with peers, critiquing, publishing, journals, reports, expository writing, letter writing.
• Oral Expression: sharing, problem solving, speaking in front of a group with ease.
• Listening: following multiple directions, listen to class discussion with understanding, listen to chapter book with understanding.

Mathematics:

Work is done with manipulative, working from the concrete experience (visual, knesthetic) toward the abstraction (on paper & mental math).

• Skills: linear counting, skip counting, square numbers, cube numbers, symbol/quantity relationships, place value, base ten hierarchies, expanded notation, understanding & analyzing numbers, prime numbers, odd/even, problem solving, geometry/patterns, measurement, area/perimeter, thinking skills, explaining of mathematical thinking, communicating ideas & understanding, the four operations & algorithms & facts, different formats, fractions, negative numbers, money, time.

Science:

• Skills: asking questions, observing, classifying, comparing & contrasting, estimating, predicting, drawing conclusions, making inferences, vocabulary, communication.
• Life Science: the characteristics of living things, the five kingdoms, botany: classification/observation/physiology, biomes & habitats, nutrition.
• Earth Sciences: experiments & observations, solar systems, movements of the earth (day/night seasons), geology.

Geography / History:

Development of a sense of time and the idea of the enormity and diversity of the world.

• Skills: map making/reading/labeling, identification of continents/oceans/land/water forms, continent studies (physical, political, natural and cultural features), geologic time- history of the earth, the needs of people, cultural celebrations, people to know, how to measure time/calendars, the history of writing, etymologies, the history of numbers/number systems, personal timelines.