Lower School (K-4th)

Nurturing Thriving Learners: Social Emotional Learning & Democracy

Our program nurtures thriving learners by promoting social-emotional learning within a democratic community. Our work is anchored in research on social-emotional learning, which identifies how emotional intelligence correlates with academic success, as well as supports the well being of our children. Our work is also informed by research on social thinking, responsive classrooms, conflict resolution, and restorative justice. We focus on growth mindset & persistence. We grow children’s independence and interdependence by building self awareness, self regulation, and relationships skills. Our practice develops children's empathy and supports children to be active members in a diverse, democratic community.

 

Developing Critical Thinkers Through Literacy

We develop literacy as a habit of life where everyone is a lifelong writer and reader. Most importantly, our literacy program develops children as critical thinkers.

Our work is anchored in research on the science of reading, National Council for Teachers of English, and essential learnings from the common core state standards. We grow foundational skills and knowledge of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. We build each student’s voice, while fostering empathy and understanding of diverse perspectives through texts that provide “mirrors” that reflect self and “windows” into others’ experiences.

If you look across our classes, you’ll see children deeply engaged in learning to read and reading to learn. We build a coherent progression for our students as they go from class to class. Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction are taught with a multi-sensory approach in order to meet the various learning needs of all students. As they start their literacy journey in Lower School, children may be writing out their alphabet and sounding out letters in decodable texts. By 4th grade they engage in analysis and cross-text class discussions comparing texts.

Writing & Analysis

Throughout their Lower School experience, students practice writing and gain confidence to view themselves as writers and develop their voices. Writing instruction is taught through a workshop model, focusing on the process of writing. This approach offers children opportunities to brainstorm, draft, revise, edit, publish, and celebrate their fiction and nonfiction writing craft. Students are explicitly taught foundational writing conventions and morphology to develop their understanding of language and vocabulary. We develop critical thinkers, questioners, and active learners who look for multiple perspectives; and organize, synthesize, and critique information. Accompanying literacy is the importance of writing.

Children learn to analyze other author’s writing, develop writing strategies in different genres, and participate in giving and receiving feedback to inform revisions. We uplift and amplify children’s authentic voices, ideas, choices, in speaking, reading, writing, and listening.

 

  

 

Growing Problem Solvers: Mathematics

We firmly believe that everyone can think mathematically and feel successful at math.

There is extensive research to show that all students can learn math and that there isn’t a “math brain”. Not knowing how to solve a problem at the outset is expected! By engaging in productive struggle with the support of and collaboration with peers and teachers, students develop strong habits of mind, such as perseverance and flexible thinking, instead of simply seeking the correct solution. Examining and learning from mistakes is an essential part of being a successful math student.

At Peninsula, students understand math, do math, and use math. To develop deep conceptual understanding, children engage in rich, inquiry-based tasks that support collaboration, challenge, and flexible approaches to problem solving. Hands-on materials and real world experiences ground abstract mathematical concepts. "Math talks" center student thinking and engagement. Routines, puzzles, and games build number sense and fluency.

Throughout Lower School, students follow a progression of mathematical reasoning: counting leads to addition and subtraction, which progresses into multiplication and division before beginning on fractions and decimals. Algebraic and spatial reasoning as well as data science are found at each level of the program in developmentally appropriate ways.

Inspiring Inquirers: Science

During Lower School, students have a wealth of experiences that foster a love of science, a capability for understanding and acting through the scientific method, and a confidence achieved through following complex procedures and conducting experiments. We celebrate children's curiosity through hands-on inquiry, experiments, and labs.

Guided by Next Generation Science Standards, we build a solid foundation of understanding how the world works through lessons in multiple fields of science - biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and anatomy - by utilizing children’s unlimited, magical powers of wonder and curiosity. We provide experiences that strive to create multi-sensory impacts that children remember, reflect, and build upon in connection with other lessons utilizing other subjects, as well as subsequent science lessons as the children grow.

With our expansive natural campus, the science curriculum utilizes our surroundings, as well as artifacts collected over Peninsula School's long history. 

 

Collaboration in Science

A love for science is reinforced by through experiments, experience, and collaboration with other disciplines across the school. Scientific literacy combines with math through learning to collect and interpret data with rain gauges, to research and presentations with the senses fair, to lab reports on phenomenon related to heat, gasses, and light.

Art and Science collaborate throughout Lower School, as classes learn about native plants, evolution, fungi and kelp forests. The utilization of art furthers the hands on experience and understanding of these subjects and the wider world that we inhabit.

  

 

Supporting Upstanders for Justice

We develop children to be Upstanders for Justice through our social studies & diversity, equity & inclusion work. Peninsula School was founded on the progressive principle that schools are labs for democratic life where we engage in the work of social transformation for local and global justice. We support our children in the ongoing work of building a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable school and society by being advocates, allies, and changemakers. We build foundations for children to examine identities, communities, systems, and histories to understand our world.

Across our Lower School classes, there's a powerful progression of children developing their understanding of identity, diversity, justice, and action as well as their capacity to stand up to injustice. Starting in Kindergarten, teachers work hard for children to see the power for change and kindness that they hold even in their young age. They spend a lot of time talking about upstanders, learning about different identities/exploring our own, and they do a large protest unit where they talk about the different ways tiny and large humans have worked together for change, whether it was to take care of the environment, to support racial equity, to support Pride, to begin to understand Dreamers.

By the time children are in 4th grade, they're engaged in interdisciplinary units focused on the Essential Questions: What are our histories, and how do they shape and inform us? How can we be change makers and caretakers of our communities & world?