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Village Elementary School
The Village Elementary School community is committed to providing children in grades three and four with an academically challenging program in a nurturing and supportive environment. Our goal is to teach children to become independent learners and to help them apply skills developed in the primary grades. The Village School staff, in partnership with parents and the greater Montgomery community, delivers a rich and differentiated program designed to prepare children to succeed as students and to become life-long learners ready for a changing world.
Literacy at Village School supports students as they learn to read and write with increasing skill and fluency. The standards-based curriculum focuses on reading and analyzing literature and informational text, close reading, supporting opinions with text evidence, and domain-specific vocabulary. Additionally, teachers engage students in interactive read alouds and guided reading, during which students are exposed to both complex text and books that correlate with their independent and instructional levels. Students become more adept writers, learning to express themselves in a variety of genres including narrative, information, and opinion writing, carefully self-assessing and revising their work. Daily instruction is organized in a workshop structure where students engage in authentic reading and writing while teachers serve as mentors and coaches, providing focused support to meet the needs of individual learners. Students enjoy showcasing their literary knowledge through discussions with peers and teachers during whole-class direct instruction, individual conferences, and small group strategy-based instruction.
Mathematics classes at Village School focus on building deep conceptual understanding along with procedural skills so that students can successfully apply mathematics in a variety of situations. Along with developing an overall number sense, the curriculum lays a solid foundation for students to apply addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to whole numbers, fractions and decimals. Fact fluency and problem solving are important cornerstones of this foundation. Students also participate in a continuous progression of learning in geometry, algebra, measurement and data. Math units follow a concrete-pictorial-abstract learning progression so students learn to make sense of mathematics and practice communicating their understandings to others. Technology tools provide additional ways to access the content and further enhance motivation and learning.
Students are provided with a variety of opportunities to think and work as scientists throughout the year. Students engage with hands-on explorations and activities in life, physical, and earth sciences that develop the science process skills of observation, hypothesis, scientific drawing, measurement and collecting data. Through an increased focus on non-fiction and informational texts, they also have opportunities to apply their reading and writing skills within the science lessons. Students learn to use their scientific knowledge as a springboard to solve problems when they participate in embedded engineering projects each year.
Our social studies program introduces the world to our students as they build a foundation for a global future. Self-awareness, awareness of the world and its people, a sense of time and place, and the skills required to form positive relationships with those around them are what comprises the primary social studies program. Students will learn about our community and the world around them studying culture and diversity, geography and map skills, and American symbols and history. Our goal is for students to develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.
Village School seeks to provide students with a wide variety of educational opportunities. In third and fourth grades students receive health and physical education, art, music, technology, library, and Spanish. Fourth grade students may also elect to participate in chorus and/or begin studying a musical instrument.
A special facet of the curriculum at Village School is the integrated use of technology to support classroom instruction. Children learn and utilize a variety of software applications: word processing, presentation and multi-media software, Google Documents, local research tools, the Internet, video conferencing, a school WeatherBug station, and other video and digital media. The school has a computer lab, media center lab, mobile Chromebook cart, and a newsroom for broadcasting student-run morning announcements. There are wireless access points throughout the building. Each classroom is also equipped with seven Chromebooks, an Internet connected LCD or a Bright Links interactive projector and a document camera. Teachers and students routinely use technology tools to enrich all areas of their program.
Village School has an active and well-integrated character education program. Every month, a pillar of character is highlighted throughout the school. Fourth graders deliver the daily morning video/news announcements which offer examples of positive behaviors that students are encouraged to model. Peer leaders promote the character education program and coordinate school-wide community service projects. Teachers create opportunities in all areas of the curriculum for students to examine and make good moral and ethical choices. They also employ strategies to build student independence and strong, positive and collaborative classroom communities.Parent involvement at Village School is an important part of the school's culture. Because the PTA provides countless hours of volunteer service, Village Elementary School students are able to enjoy a tremendously enhanced program.
Ms. Susan E. Lacy
(609) 466-7606
