Lower School

Our Pre-Kindergarten program is deeply rooted in the belief that each child is capable, vibrant, and intelligent with an ability and drive to learn. Upon entering our warm and cozy classroom, our students are embraced and known as the unique individuals they are and gently guided to experience their day in a curious, joyful, and positive way. Through our Reggio Emilia constructivist approach, we focus on the whole child; we listen and observe to understand what our students’ languages of learning are and then provide experiences and opportunities for them to expand and delve further into their self-guided learning. 

Our goal in Pre-K is about laying a foundation of social emotional skills, such as  self-awareness, self-management, relational skills, and decision making. We also balance this student path with the opportunity to develop important foundational skills and habits in our Pre-Kindergarten. School readiness comes not from ensuring early learners have academic skills as early as possible. Instead, a child is ready for school when they have had time and space to practice social-emotional skills, self-regulation, problem solving strategies, critical and creative thinking, and collaboration. Learning how to transition from home to school, develop the muscle control and emotional endurance to participate in circle time, and engage bodies and minds to express thoughts, all help lay the strong foundations for school readiness. 

Our Pre-K day starts at 8:30 with students entering and transitioning from home. A morning meeting sets the tone for the day, and students choose how they want to spend their time. Our Pre-k friends have snack in the PK room and enjoy some outside time - either in our nature-based playground or in our outside courtyard adjacent to the classroom. After some more guided play and learning, Pre-K students join our K-2 students in the Main Common area for lunch (brought from home) and have recess with these older students.  In the afternoons, our students enjoy some time with each of our specialists (PE, STEM, music, art and Spanish), before settling in for some quiet rest time. After another guided choice time, the day ends at 2:30, with an option to stay until 3:30 to meet their older sibling at dismissal time.

Our Kindergarten through 2nd grade program provides a beautiful balance of developing lifelong social emotional habits and strategies with important academic foundations that instill curiosity and a passion for learning while also creating a student's deep sense of belonging to their class and lower school community.

In these early primary years, it is essential that students learn how to grow socially and emotionally, how to build kind and positive relationships, and how to engage in a healthy decision-making process. With the help of a series of tools including a growth mindsent framework, mood meters, Responsive Classroom curriculum, and the Zones of Regulation, our students build an understanding and awareness of how they are feeling and actively develop strategies to manage these feelings. 

Academically, these early years focus on helping our students build a foundation of habits, skills, and depth of knowledge that set the path for future growth. While the range of learning levels and readiness in these younger years is typically broad, we respect and meet each child at their unique developmental level while also supporting benchmark academic skill development. As a small school, we have the flexibility to take a student-centered approach rather than simply a standards-based approach in order to provide the right amount of challenge and support for each child.

Our 3rd through 5th grade program embraces the priority of students feeling safe, seen and supported to come to school every day while also experiencing a time of deep academic independence and growth. We focus on strong classroom routines that help them develop excellent academic habits. Here, they transition from learning to read, to reading to learn and begin to apply all the foundational skills acquired in early years. At the same time, we strategize with students about how to show up as their best selves by focusing on executive function skills. 

In every classroom, we set clear intentions around how to maximize the learning experience: organizing, planning, and prioritizing tasks, self-monitoring, sustaining attention, understanding different points of view, and regulating emotions. All are important parts to bringing out the best in our students. We believe it's not what we know that matters; it's knowing how to use what we know that will help guide us in this world.

Now with an academic foundation solidly in place, students deepen their learning. They read for reading's sake, they write to express themselves, and they calculate to make sense of the world. Always keeping the student at the core, our teachers go beyond the curriculum and take advantage of the flexibility and fluidity that makes teaching the older elementary students so fun! We use the Storyline approach and our commitment to project-based and experiential learning to set the stage for deep and meaningful learning which fuels students' curiosity, engagement, and desire to show up each day ready to learn.

Inquiry-based learning is an important part of our curriculum as it allows students to work for an extended period of time investigating and responding to complex questions, problems, and challenges. In 4th and 5th grades, students have the opportunity to choose a topic or passion deep dive. Through study and work with a mentor, students acquire new skills and present what they've learned in a written project and oral presentation. Recent examples included dog training, cake decorating, computer programming, and mastering aerial silks.

Reading: The lower school reading program strives to turn each child into a lifelong reader where they can find solace and love in discovering the printed word. In all grades, students engage in a workshop or centers model and learn to become confident readers through experiences in shared reading, interactive read-alouds, small guided reading group instruction, book clubs or novel studies, independent reading, and individual teacher/student conferring. Formal reading assessments take place three times per year with the Fountas and Pinnell Literacy Benchmarking System in order to gauge student interest and readiness. The basis of these formal assessments, as well as more observational and informal assessments, help guide instruction in specific reading skills and strategies. Regardless of their age or developmental readiness, reading instruction is centered on a combination of the essential elements of reading: phonics, accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Kindergartners through fifth graders are exposed to and read books from multiple genres at their instructional and independent reading level. In the same class, students can be found reading poetry, realistic fiction, informational texts, historical fiction, graphic novels, science fiction, and biographies just to name a few. Most importantly, children transition from learning to read to reading to learn, and build a life-long foundation of appreciation and love for literacy. 

Writing: The writing program provides a supportive, interactive, and challenging environment that focuses on helping children to hear their own voice, write with confidence, and find joy in written expression. From Pre-K through 2nd grade, Handwriting Heros provides a solid foundation for successful fine motor practice and handwriting skills. A combination of Writer's Workshop, Lucy Calkins’ Units of Writing, and The Daily Five provide the framework for the writing curriculum. This workshop approach to writing is based on four guiding principles: students will engage in writing when they write about their own lives, they will use a consistent writing process across the grades, they will work in authentic and meaningful ways, and they will develop independence as lifelong writers. Writing lessons often begin with a whole class mini-lesson followed by independent writing time where the teacher is conferring and modeling writing techniques with students as they move through the writing process. The workshop usually ends with a short celebration of student work. Students in all grades publish original pieces within three distinct genres: narrative, informational, and opinion, and oftentimes these pieces are tied into the Storyline curriculum as well as other content areas. 

Math: The lower school math curriculum strives to foster a lifelong enjoyment of number relationships and thinking based in logic and reasoning. If it's through curricular resources such as Math in Focus, Beast Academy, or math approaches like Jo Boalar's Mindset Mathematics, our pedagogical belief is centered around students having access to appropriately challenging content, collaborating with peers, having a growth mindset about making mistakes, approaching problems with multiple perspectives and engaging in productive struggle. Whether through whole class, small group, and individualized instruction, students use a problem-based approach to everyday situations and are exposed to a variety of formats for practicing basic skills. Students explore numbers, patterns, place value, number stories, data and chance, computation, measurement, basic facts, geometry, algebra, money and fractions. Ultimately, we believe that students should not only be fast at procedural skills, such as algorithms, but should have depth and fluidity in how they understand math concepts and versatility in approaching problem solving. 

Storyline: One of the most popular programs in the lower school is Storyline, a teaching method developed in Scotland. During Storyline, students become characters related to a theme and are asked to respond to various incidents using teamwork, problem solving and critical thinking skills. During past Storylines, classrooms have come to life as a Colonial Village, Rainforest, Medieval Castle, Research Ship, Art Museum and Invention Factory. Throughout the Storyline, classes work individually and cooperatively, at times in multi-age groups, on various projects. These projects may include research, construction, art, science experiments, brainstorming, inventions, or musical performances. The culmination of Storyline is an exciting showcase of the children's knowledge and creative work. Each teacher brings the Storyline theme into the classroom by integrating related topics throughout other curriculum areas. For example, during the Invention Factory Storyline, students read biographies of famous inventors in language arts and studied pulleys and other simple machines during science. This integrated studies approach helps students better understand a topic in both breadth and depth. And because students are active participants in the Storyline via their characters, they are engaged and invested in the learning process. In other words, they are having fun!

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) at Cascades Academy is a mission critical part to our overall school program. As described here, we believe that the development of personal and interpersonal skills are vital to our students today and in the future. 

We have a unique opportunity in the lower school to embed SEL skills into everything that we do. Whether it is focusing on our school's values during our weekly assemblies connecting in multi-age community groups with 5th graders as leaders, working with our Responsive Classroom approach to create an engaged, positive classroom culture, or teaching specific strategies to help students grow in self-awareness, self-management and friendship building skills, social emotional learning is an important partner in getting our students to be their best selves.  

Our Specialist program plays an essential role in not only deepening our students’ learning experience but also informing meaningful relationships with other adults over a span of time.  While the classroom teachers have the opportunity to get to know their students deeply every year, our specialists know our students over the span of many years.  In fact, some of our current high school students have had the same specialists since they were in Pre-Kindergarten.  

While our Pre-Kindergarten students enjoy one specialist subject per day, our Kindergarten through 5th grade students have each specialist twice a week. This consistency allows for greater exposure, curriculum integration and depth into other learning areas, and provides our students with a well-rounded learning experience. 

STEM: Each year in our STEM program, students are introduced to new science topics aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards through exploration and experimentation in order to further their understanding of the world around them. As students take in this new information, they apply these scientific concepts to engineering challenges that may utilize new technology, inspire students to develop new technology, and require them to make use of the engineer design process to work towards a solution that improves the world. Through these learning opportunities and with a critical thinking lens, students are encouraged to reflect upon their work, embrace their mistakes, push themselves as innovators, support others in their creative endeavors and recognize the impact they have on the world and the importance of engineering for the good of our planet.

Music: Students explore musical concepts such as beat, volume, speed, and pitch, and practice these concepts using voice, percussion instruments, strings, and barred instruments. They are exposed to and participate in the music of other cultures and explore historically significant composers and musicians from all over the world. 

Spanish: Through lessons, games, songs, stories and art projects, students are engaged and having fun while learning the Spanish language. They learn basic Spanish vocabulary, some verb usage and conjugation, and prepositional phrases. Students learn to use increasingly complex phrases to describe things in Spanish. Our ultimate goal is for our students to develop appreciation, confidence and strategies to communicate in a language that’s different from their own.

P.E.: In P.E. class, students learn a variety of games and activities that focus on effective manipulative skills (catching, bouncing, dribbling), as well as motor skills (agility, reaction time, balance, speed). The class engages in team games and traditional team sports that encourage cooperation with others and the value of safety and procedures (following rules, fair play). P.E. offers students an avenue to encourage joy of movement, skill competence, self-confidence, self-expression, and accepting challenges.

Art: In art class, students build on the seven elements of art: line, shape, color, value, form, texture and space. An overarching goal of the lower school art program is to help students develop a deeper understanding of art as a visual language and how it helps us communicate and connect with one another. As children progress through the program, we introduce more challenging art media and techniques, and students continue to gain inspiration from different art forms and concepts from a variety of cultural and historical sources. Students discuss, interpret, and critique art as a means to expand on their personal connection and reaction to different forms of art.

Drama: Drama is integrated into our students' school year throughout their Storyline experiences as well as special projects or lessons. Emphasis is on using their theatrical tools of body, face, voice, and imagination to create characters and develop stories. In combination with music, drama presents all of our K-5 students with opportunities to let their creative juices flow while building their performance muscles.

Beyond the individual learner, our lower school students are part of larger, collaborative community. Through several multi-age programs such as Storyline and our Buddy Program, our lower school students get to know one another. Multi-age activities foster incredible opportunities for mentorship and leadership among the older students and self-confidence and teamwork among the younger students. This kind of caring, collaborative community is an important part of who we are, and we invite you to come experience it for yourself!

Alongside high engagement within our building, experiential learning also comes to life as part of our outdoor program. It is guided and facilitated around the principles of taking responsibility for (1) self, (2) others, and (3) the environment, through participation in a host of outdoor experiences. Besides taking advantage of our own beautiful campus, outdoor education takes place in a variety of outdoor settings and occurs regularly in the context of standard field trips (PK-5), the Outdoor School Program (K-5), the all-day ski/snowboard days at Mt. Bachelor (K-5), and the overnight Traveling School Program (2-5).