The Lower School

Students begin their journey toward becoming lifelong learners in Carolina Day's Lower School. The atmosphere here is different from other schools. Our students are immersed in a safe environment that allows them to stretch their minds and challenge their thinking. They gain self-confidence and experience success. They learn respect and responsibility. They mature in remarkable ways. Here's what a current parent says: "When we visited the classrooms, they asked the students to tell us what was going on, to explain what they were doing and why. The kids looked us in the eyes and shook our hands. Even first graders! They're not precocious, but they're confident. It's so impressive the way the children carry themselves."

Carolina Day's Lower School uses many approaches to show children where their natural gifts are. Students have opportunities to work with their hands, to play math games, to do science experiments, to write original stories. Students also learn how to research, gathering information from multiple sources. They learn public speaking by giving oral reports on their projects.

INNOVATIVE APPROACHES

The lower school curriculum is customized and unique, written by our teachers, as it is throughout Carolina Day School. We revise it frequently, applying new techniques from professional development training, cutting-edge research, or simply lessons learned from our own experience in the classroom. For example, teachers in our Key School found that young children have fewer writing problems when they learn cursive writing at an earlier age. We incorporated the same technique in the Lower School with impressive results.

We use interdisciplinary methods whenever possible. The art teacher has students do projects related to what they are learning in social studies, and the music teacher uses music from countries being studied. Our teachers incorporate the latest brain research directly into the classroom. For instance, research shows that young children learn by doing; therefore, we do not use computers in our classrooms until the third grade. We believe that early computer use is not in the best interest of developing brains. We get strong support from parents on this stand.

SPECIAL TOUCHES

Our curriculum features five special components: Spanish, art, music, physical education, and library. Spanish is our anchor language; we begin instruction in kindergarten. We believe that music and movement are very important to brain development and incorporate them throughout the Lower School. We also believe that family involvement is crucial. We host an annual dance for the children accompanied by their parents. And Grandparents' Day is one of the highlights of our year.

Our children publish a newspaper called Carolina Kids' News. We come together as a community for assemblies that celebrate Earth Day or focus on our character education program. Students get involved in community service, raising money for UNICEF, recycling paper and batteries, singing monthly at a nursing home in Asheville. Perhaps the most important subject our students learn is what it means to be a member of a community.

THE FOREFRONT OF TEACHING

Beginning in third grade, we administer standardized tests developed for independent schools, but we stay focused on the needs of our students, not the artificial demands of required end-of-year tests. As one lower school teacher says, "We know what the children need to learn, and we keep in mind that they will have to perform well on tests, including SATs in Upper School. That's in the back of my mind, but never in the forefront of my teaching. In the front of my mind is teaching students to love learning so that taking those tests some day won't be a big deal."