Kindergarten

Starting school is an exciting time for your child. Our schools provide a rich learning environment for all children to learn and grow.

In the Kindergarten program, your child will develop their skills and abilities through inquiry and intentional play-based learning. Teachers and early childhood educators plan learning experiences where children are actively engaged in learning and thinking creatively.

Children can attend Junior Kindergarten in the calendar year that they turn four and Senior Kindergarten in the year that they turn five.

If it seems like there is a lot of talking as you walk through our school, there is. Constituents engage often in productive dialogue about learning and growing. Our students are excited about learning and so are our teachers. Grade level teams have common preparation periods multiple times weekly, allowing time for teachers to mine their collegial resources. A weekly book club meeting over lunch allows teachers to discuss a common text, be it school-wide (in which meetings are conducted simultaneously in smaller groups, with greater collaboration occurring through traditional methods like jigsaws, as well as web-based methods like wikis and blogs) or grade-wide (typically a complex student text read and discussed by grade-level colleagues as a way to consider methods of teaching it to their students). Meetings are structured in a way to promote productivity and limit non-task-specific talk. Procedural protocols are established and used at every meeting.

It is the administration’s job to support the fine work of the teachers and the students. Just like students and teachers, the administrators engage in frequent dialogue about best practices and ways to continue improving and promoting the school’s culture. Like students and teachers, administrators are also expected to engage in multiple two-way conversations around meaningful feedback that makes others better. Administrators make every effort to spend as much time as possible every day in classrooms.