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Family ResourcesGrades Fourth - Sixth
The Upper Elementary program is a three-year journey for the 9-12 year old ideally with prior Montessori experience. In Upper El the child has time and opportunity to extend the sensorial experiences of early school work into critical thinking, abstract reasoning, and self-reflection.
Spiraling Curriculum
In broad terms, the curriculum includes language, mathematics, and culture. Specifically, it annually exposes students to three grade levels of reading, writing, grammar, and spelling; math and geometry. Over the course of a three year cycle, students receive lessons on history, biology, chemistry, geography, and ecology. Field trips, dramatic productions, outdoor education, experiments, and community service projects enrich classroom activities in a developmentally appropriate way.
Expertise
The faculty in the Upper El program are experienced, trained, and dedicated Montessori practitioners. Individually, they prepare and practice with passion for guiding the next generation of skilled and compassionate global citizens. As a group, they represent diversity of age, race, gender, sexual-orientation, and cultural background. Their common goal is to guide each child to discover the teacher within themself.
Time of Transformation
The entire Upper Elementary curriculum is informed by the fact that the 9-12 year old is asking, Who Am I? What Am I Made of? How Do I Serve a Purpose Beyond Myself? In this way, the program meets the tween where they are, guiding, challenging, and protecting the student at a time of transformation from childhood to adolescence.
These ideas for the UE curriculum aim to use unhurried time as a resource for learning. We recognize that children are born knowing how to learn and use time flexibly, repetitively, strategically, and in relation to new experiences and relationships.
Continuity, rather than fragmentation, is a guiding principle for the adults’ organization of time.
