Lower School

Rigorous and Experiential Curriculum

Our program is marked by our small class sizes, which allow teachers to get to know students’ unique needs, interests, and motivations and to plan instruction and experiences with those in mind. Our teachers continually seek knowledge on how students learn best so that they can provide the best possible education for the children in their care. The Lower School seeks to inspire curiosity, foster inquiry, and cultivate a hunger for challenge among our students. Our rigorous curriculum is balanced with our Learning Center’s holistic approach to intervention, providing support for all children who need it. We are uniquely poised to offer a solid ethical and moral foundation built on shared core values, Jewish prayer, and text study. This is an environment in which your child will thrive as a learner and a mensch (good person).

Our educational priorities include:

• A Structured Literacy Approach to teaching reading.  General Studies teachers use Ohio Department of Education-approved methods and materials from Wilson, The Institute for Multi-sensory Education, and in some cases other research-backed organizations that represent the industry standards in systematic and explicit reading instruction. Our children’s library, Lexia, and other reading initiatives support and promote a life-long love of reading for our students.
• An interdisciplinary approach to math, science, and social studies.  It is not uncommon to see our students raising chicks, building small businesses, writing class newspapers, or designing model structures. In the Lower School, math, science, and social studies take on a life of their own when students’ learning culminates in real-world challenges that they tackle with the skills and concepts explored through interdisciplinary projects-based learning.  Data collection and analysis, concepts of area and perimeter, computation and strategies of working with numbers come into play to build deep conceptual understanding, automaticity, and procedural fluency that will serve them well in Upper School and beyond.
• A Strong Learning Center.  Our learning center is staffed by two fully licensed intervention specialists who are trained in Orton Gillingham reading instruction as well as a concrete-pictorial-abstract progression for fostering mathematical cognitive development.  We are committed to using assessment instruments that screen for learning differences as well as allow us to fine-tune instruction. These data collection practices give us a variety of information with which to partner with parents to ensure every child is receiving a high-quality and effective education.
• A rich Judaic Studies Program that balances skills, content knowledge, and inspiration to deliver upon our mission to provide a comprehensive Jewish education within a modern Orthodox Zionist framework. We aim to inspire learning, living, and growing in Judaism as a life-long commitment, for our students put Torah values at the center of their lives so they can be successful and responsible members of contemporary Jewish and American societies. Our Judaic Studies Program in Lower School focuses on middot, or character traits, that model respect, faith, kindness, and other Jewish values. We achieve that through teaching specific components at every grade level. Those components are Kriyah (learning to read textual Hebrew); Jewish laws, holiday and customs; and Chumash (study of Biblical text).  
• Modern Hebrew Language Instruction follows a rigorous, mastery-based sequenced Curricula published by MaTaCh (Center for Educational Technology in Israel) so that students in grades 1-6 learn and practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing Hebrew as a second language. In addition to students engaging  in coursework that emphasizes a familiarity with  Israeli Culture, our classes also include experiential units and programs. Many of our graduates go on to live in Israel for a year or more and are frequently asked where they learned to understand and speak such fluent Hebrew. 

Explore our Lower School curriculum using the links on the right.