Program Essentials

Warm and nurturing environment guided by a community commitment to foster an early and a lifelong love of learning, cultivate inclusivity and compassion and instill honesty and respect for self and others.
Academics in small groups tailored to meet children where they are as learners.
Time for outdoor play in all seasons.
Generous amounts of time for exploration, inquiry, discovery, and student-selected play
Social-emotional learning is taught explicitly through the CharacterStrong program and infused into all aspects of daily life.

Responsive Classroom

Responsive Classroom is an evidence-based approach to teaching and discipline that focuses on engaging academics, positive community, effective management, and developmental awareness. It helps elementary and middle school educators to create safe, joyful, and engaging classrooms and school communities where students develop strong social and academic skills and every student can thrive. (taken from responsiveclassroom.org)

English Language Arts

Heggerty (Auditory)

Heggerty Phonemic Awareness lessons are meant to supplement existing literacy curriculum.

Rhyming and onset fluency
Isolating final or medial sounds
Blending and segmenting words, syllables, and phonemes
Adding and deleting words, syllables, and phonemes
Substituting phonemes

Math

Math is woven into everyday life in the classroom. Counting the number of days on the calendar, using math language to describe geometric blocks of different shapes, exploring mathematical ideas to solve problems all provide daily opportunities for children to be immersed in the language and ideas of math. Teachers extend learning and challenge students to grow while fostering curiosity and an interest in numbers.

Joyful ABCs Curriculum

The Joyful ABCs Curriculum supports children’s positive identity development while also growing their language and literacy skills with activities, museum objects, and new words. This flows into the Racial Literacy Curriculum which is used in Kindergarten-Eighth Grades.

Preschool

Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) at SPS

SEL is embedded in everything students do at St. Peter’s, and developing social-emotional competencies is an integral part of education. SEL helps students discover their identities, manage emotions, achieve goals, foster empathy, and maintain healthy relationships. St. Peter’s follows the CASEL model of social-emotional learning, which focuses on five connected areas of competency: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Through SEL, it is our goal to promote educational equity through authentic relationships between students, teachers, faculty, families, and the larger community.

Project Based Learning

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.

Students work on a project over an extended period of time – from a week up to a semester – that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience.

As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project Based Learning unleashes a contagious, creative energy among students and teachers.

Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.