A Morning in the Lower School

One of my favorite things to do is start my day by welcoming students at the Lower School entrance and then visiting all the classrooms.

I always begin my tour at the kindergarten and work my way up to the fifth grade. In a very short time I can not only interact with most all of the students and see what their working on, but I am also reminded of the developmental stages that they grow through.

The kindergartners interact with one another by playing together, drawing and building. They learn the days of the week, months of the year and sounds that the alphabet letters make when put in different combinations. They count, sort, and learn how to measure.

Soon, they grow to be first and second graders who can determine punctuation marks, begin reading fluently, work independently and write short stories. Math consists of adding and subracting, grouping and making up problems.

In the third grade they transform from learning to read, to reading to learn. Their writing gets longer and they take a greater interest in things outside their own lives. Math becomes more challenging as they are introduced to story problems, graphs and equations.

By fourth and fifth grade, they are giving oral book reports, learning to provide helpful critiques to others, writing coherent and entertaining poems and narratives, learning the parts of plants, and scientific concepts such as how photosynthesis works. Math has moved on to complex algorithms and more complex story problems.

In a very short amount of time I get to see six years of developmental and educational growth. It's really quite amazing, and it reminds me that children do move beyond the early challenges of schooling and become delightful, knowledgeable students.

Then comes middle school...