Primary Years Program

Program Highlights:

• International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB/PYP)
• Everyday Mathematics Program
• Multifaceted Language Arts curriculum
• Co-curricular Enrichment
• Environmental Studies Program
• Spanish Language curriculum, including TPRS
• Advanced educational technology in every classroom
• Two tenured teachers in each classroom and a low student-teacher ratio

Everyday Mathematics Program:

This program provides a framework for High Meadows students to learn and practice math skills and use them to reason and problem-solve. Physical models help students connect concrete and abstract mathematical concepts including logic, space, measurement and estimation, as well as basic algebraic and geometric concepts. Developed by the University of Chicago, the Everyday Mathematics program has earned the U.S. Department of Education's highest What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) rating of any commercially published elementary mathematics curriculum.

Multifaceted Language Arts Curriculum:

High Meadows Primary Years students advance their reading skills through a balanced combination of Balanced Literacy, Guided Reading, Literacy Portraits, Writers Workshops, Phonics, Spelling and Grammar. All of these approaches come together through the exploration of literature in a variety of genres. Children learn to read at their own pace and appropriate level of instruction.

Our students continue to improve their ability to write by hand and on the computer, through a combination of two handwriting curriculums and our computer skills enrichment program. Student writers thrive at High Meadows, with its combination of task-oriented writing (researching a question to record knowledge), creative writing, and student-directed journaling.

Spanish Language Curriculum:

The High Meadows Spanish curriculum uses the Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) methodology. This highly successful method of teaching foreign languages is based on recognized second language acquisition theories. Students are exposed to vocabulary and grammar through reading and storytelling. As students gain confidence and proficiency - particularly in the Middle Years - lessons are augmented with more structured grammar and vocabulary usage. Students usually go on to high school well prepared for Spanish II, Spanish II honors or Spanish III.