Lower Development

The Lower Development division believes in and follows the school's i-PAL philosophy in all functions. i-PAL is well known, understood and accepted by all of our faculty and support staff and our programs and pedagogy reflects the belief in the uniqueness of the individual student and our responsibility to identify his/her personal and academic strengths and needs and adapt instruction whenever possible to personalize it. We provide experiences that engage our students in developmentally appropriate activities in which they have opportunities to be active participants through both hands on experiences and with beginning stages of meta cognition in order to assess their own progress and set their own goals. Learning and teaching in this division builds the foundation for life-long learning skills that will develop throughout their subsequent years of education.

In the Lower Development division, the curriculum includes English Literacy, Spanish Literacy, Numeracy, Natural Science, Technology Science, Physical Education, General Music, Visual Arts, Social Studies and Social Emotional Development. Students are also offered the choice in Fine Arts of participating in the general music and art programs or choosing instead a Complementary Course in: piano, guitar, visual arts and drama. In these courses, students receive personalized instruction in small groups from an expert teacher (for an additional fee) during regular school hours. These courses also provide expert instruction to individual and small groups. Extracurricular options for students include Soccer and Basketball (separate male and female teams grouped by age). There is also a Tae Kwon Do program (mixed male and female) grouped by age. Fine Arts has the following after school options: violin, guitar, piano, visual arts, drama, and dance (mixed program of ballet, tap, jazz).