Lower School Life
Life in Lower School
Our Lower School students are actively engaged every class period with interactive instruction from the teacher led lessons. In Lower School we use a teaching method called direct instruction. With this model, the teacher is constantly asking the students questions during the lesson to keep engagement high and the pacing at a speed where they don’t have time to be bored. Their minds are constantly engaged with individual questions, which then the teacher turns into a whole class response. By having these questions throughout the lessons, teachers are able to check for mastery by checking to see if every student responds and knows the material being taught. Class discussions also take place daily, where the teacher leads the discussion and the students can then dive deeper into the material to focus on what is true and beautiful.
In the lower grades, there are multiple recess breaks for students to get out their wiggles so that they can come back to the classroom and focus. In the older Lower School grades, there is one recess at their lunch time. Every Lower School student goes to PE or Music everyday. Having a full education requires not only book study but how to work their muscles in PE and get their brains thinking musically.
The studen’t’s morning routine starts out in Freedom Hall (gym) where they sit behind their teacher’s cone and talk quietly with their friends. Before 8:00, the teachers come and get their students and walk them to class to start their day. The teacher greets them in the hallway, and gives them the guidelines of expectations for the morning and they enter and begin working on the task at their seat. When it turns 8:00, all the classes stand and recite the pledge, in their own room and then sing a patriotic song. After daily uniform checks are complete, they continue on with their day.
LTA’s high structured classrooms provide an environment for high levels of learning to take place. With every lesson, the teachers praise their students so that the students can hear all the good things they are doing throughout the day. The teachers praise every student, every day and we try to do this in every class. Students love to hear the good things they are doing and will work hard to please their teachers. By having a positive discipline policy, we see few problems in class.