Primary Level Program

Students have outside time for playing, sports, sledding and barn chores.

Each group begins the day with a morning meeting to focus on community building and to orient for the day. Morning meeting includes greetings, exchanging important news in students’ lives, sharing announcements, and discussing issues that affect the group. We also play group games to foster connection and cooperative problem solving. Everyone gathers for an All-School Meeting once a week.

Primary students explore new concepts and skills in math through hands-on activities in which they manipulate a variety of math materials and objects. As they progress toward understanding, they incorporate the use of symbols and engage in paper and pencil work. Students work with the teacher in direct and guided instruction, do projects, math games and independent practice. Science and math are often integrated when data collected from science explorations is analyzed and interpreted. We emphasize conceptual understanding, problem solving, real world applications, and fluency of math skills. Students work at their own level and at their own pace.

Reading aloud creates a shared world for a group, immerses them in a common literary experience, and serves as a springboard for discussions and for many content area explorations. Books for the primary group include shorter picture books as well as chapter books that take several weeks to finish.

We immerse primary students in naturally meaningful and engaging language activities to support them as beginning readers and writers. We read enlarged print stories, poems and chants aloud together to model the reading process, teach specific skills, and generate appreciation for story and language. We voice act stories through reader’s theater, and create puppet shows and small plays. We sing together, and students all have songbooks, to which we regularly add, so that they can read as well as sing each song. We do integrated projects that focus on a topic, such as insects, and explore the topic through field studies and hands-on activities, reading, writing and the arts, including drawing, painting, movement and sculpture. We do direct skill-building work, as well, through word study and handwriting exercises. The focus in all activities is multi-tiered to support students at different levels.

Primary students write daily in a writer’s workshop. The purpose of the workshop is to enable students to think and work like writers, to experience writing as a significant and compelling way to develop and communicate ideas, to cultivate a love of writing, and to experience being part of a writing community,. Young students express themselves initially through drawings, then begin labeling their drawings, then move to writing sentences and longer pieces. Student writing is regularly published in class anthologies.

During this block of time students initiate their own activities, join into activities created by other students, and take part in projects generated by the teacher or which evolve through the interests of the class. Pursuits at choice time include woodworking, design and construction projects, painting, drawing, handcrafts, science explorations, fantasy play, block building, reading, puzzles, clay sculpture, writing, taking things apart, and puppetry.

We value independent choice for the way it supports students in developing a strong sense of themselves and their interests, and fosters personal initiative and self-direction within the setting of the school. Students’ choices and their approaches to learning during this open time also give us important information about how each student naturally interacts and learns.

Through the year, we engage in a series of thematic inquiries in the areas of science and social studies. Examples of recent themes include: life cycles; water; the scientific process; habitats; and Native American life in our area. Each inquiry provides a focus for learning about an aspect of the world in depth, and gives us a context for developing critical thinking, communication skills and creative expression. We emphasize hands-on activities to kindle curiosity and to foster understanding. We integrate project work with explorations in the arts. Learning often happens outside.

Primary students spend time reading independently each day. The scaffolding they experience in the morning’s shared reading sessions is put to practice in their afternoon independent reading sessions. Students choose books with our assistance. Emerging readers each have a basket of books to choose from that we regularly help to stock.

Each younger student in the school is paired with an older student and given support to form a yearlong mentor relationship. A half-hour is set aside each week for the partners to work together on projects and play games.

We play sports and games such as soccer, kickball, capture-the-flag, and tag games that develop physical stamina, strength and coordination, and which encourage cooperation and friendly competition. During the winter months we sled on our hill out back, skate on our ice rink, and ski (downhill, snowboarding, and cross-country) one afternoon a week.

On Wednesday afternoons, all students participate in workshops that typically last about four weeks. Students give input into ideas for the workshops, and choose among workshops for each session. Workshops are offered in the arts, handcrafts and living arts, outdoor adventure, and other experiential learning opportunities. Many workshops take place outside. In the winter, the whole school participates in our ski program on Wednesday afternoons.

Students help to clean and take care of the school and our chickens.

Young primary students are asked to read with their parents for about 10 minutes each night, and parents are asked to read to these students for at least 20 minutes. Once students become independent readers, they are asked to read for a half hour at home each day. Older primary students are given about 20 minutes combined of word study and math homework each day.

At the end of each trimester, students share their learning with the school community, including other students and their parents. This can take the form of oral presentations, visual displays, multi-media presentations, writing, art and handwork, and the performance of dramatic skits, poetry and dialogues.

For a week during mud-season each year we turn every classroom into an art studio and dive into the arts. Students choose week-long morning and afternoon art workshops to pursue. Recent Arts Week offerings have included set-design (we typically do a performance of one-act plays in the week following Arts Week), pottery, the art of South American cooking (each year a different culture is offered; previous offerings have included Greek and Italian cooking), African drumming, pack-basket weaving, mural painting, chair building and carving, and trumpet.