The Elementary Experience
The elementary experience is all about being a responsible, respectful, contributing member of a multi-age class. It’s about coming to school excited about learning. It’s about being a thinker and doer, and a self-directed learner. It’s about being a friend, a mentor, and a good citizen. It’s about facing challenges head-on, taking risks and making connections. It’s about getting busy and doing one’s best work.

Multi-age Classrooms
In our elementary classrooms, students are blended in mixed-age groupings with the same teacher(s) for an extended period of time (usually two to three years). A multi-age program effectively promotes the natural growth and development of young children. This environment enables all learners to be successful. It allows for and encourages risk-taking and mentoring and promotes process learning with open-ended outcomes.

More and more research indicates that multi-age grouping is preferable for many reasons. It focuses on and emphasizes the continuum of learning and long-term educational goals, removing arbitrary boundaries of grade levels and age. It more clearly acknowledges learning as an ongoing process. It can better accommodate “learning spurts” in students, and provides greater opportunity for in-depth student evaluation over a longer period of time. Ultimately, children, parents and teachers are able to form longer-lasting relationships that help ensure the child’s academic success.

A typical day consists of:
• arriving at school and joining friends on the way to the classroom
• putting personal belongings away, signing in and returning homework to the bin,
• reading the posted newsletter that welcomes students to the class with reminders
for the day
• challenging oneself in academic workshops — reading/writing and math and theme study
• exploring beyond the classroom at the indoor and outdoor play areas, woods and field, and on scheduled field trips
• enjoying a snack and a brought-from-home lunch
• applying oneself with specialist teachers in art, foreign language, library, music, physical education and technology