Our Grammar School houses Kindergarten through Sixth Grade, and builds the foundation for academic and personal success.
We take seriously the admonition that school is not for the sake of school but for the sake of life—and the process of living responsible, independent, and productive lives begins when students are young. The classical experience in Grammar School instills studious habits, decorum, and respect. It promotes the love of order, of precise and edifying language, and of objective standards of goodness, truth, and beauty. And, more than anything, it invites students to delight in the rich variety of the natural and human world.
Core Virtues
Our Core Virtues take shape when students are young, in the classroom and in the common life of the school. We teach students that there is a moral order in the nature of things, that understanding that order is possible, and that we should pursue that order with all our heart.
Moral and Civic Virtue
We set the foundations of moral and civic virtue with the belief that virtue is pleasant, honorable, and ultimately worth defending. This comes to life in the stories our teachers tell, the awards we bestow, the art we depict, and our respect of young minds as they think through each element of their learning.
Curriculum Highlights
The Grammar School curriculum is composed of three main components, Core Knowledge sequence, Explicit Phonics instruction, and Singapore mathematics.
Core Knowledge
The Core Knowledge curriculum is the most content-rich curriculum now extant for Kindergarten through Eighth Grade in subjects from history and science to art and music. It focuses squarely on content whereas other curricula, particularly the similarly named Common Core, focus on skills.
Students memorize facts, dates, names, places, and events, which give them the basic pieces of geography, history, and science. With this wealth of knowledge, students form reasonable and coherent opinions, craft good arguments, and seek out deeper and broader knowledge. Background knowledge is vital for increased reading ability, interest in school, improved memory, and understanding abstractions and meaning.
For instance:
Students in the Second Grade learn about ancient Greece, about specific events, people, and contributions to civilization, including democracy, poetry, and philosophy. Some of these concepts are revisited in later grades in more complete and mature ways, but our content-rich curriculum inspires real delight in the richness of the human and natural world. By knowing that the Battle of Marathon was the first time the Greeks charged in battle, students join in the task of preserving our western heritage, and appreciate how history can teach us about ourselves, where we came from, and where we are going.
Access Literacy & Explicit Phonics
The explicit phonics approach teaches how words work rather than teaching children to memorize words by sight. Students learn all the different sounds a letter or letter combinations may make, and all the ways a sound may be spelled. Through a step-by-step, logical sequence, they learn how to decode words.
Singapore Math
The Singapore Math method, originally developed by Singapore’s Ministry of Education for Singapore public schools, is world renowned for its effectiveness in teaching conceptual depth and problem solving. From kindergarten through 7th grade, students develop an aptitude for algebraic thinking.Â
Curriculum At a Glance
Kindergarten
1st Grade
2nd Grade
3rd Grade
4th Grade
5th Grade
6th Grade
K-12 Art
K-12 Physical Education