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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks PP.  I'm mostly interested in lower school.  What is the teaching style?  Traditional curriculum, lecture, rote memorization, phonics, writing workshop?  What is a typical day?[/quote]
OK, that helps.  I'll try to answer.  The teaching style is highly interactive.  I've never seen or heard of teachers giving lectures or teaching by memorization.  I imagine that would bore the young kids silly.  What I see are lots of games and activities.  The teachers will show the children how to play a math game, for example, and then split the children into small groups to play for a while.  Then then teachers will change the rules to make it more challenging and let the kids play some more.  For reading, the children will read stories collectively, in small groups, or individually, depending on the grade, and then will gather in a big group or small groups to discuss the story.  The details vary on the day.  Every child will be encouraged to talk about what is happening in the story, and how the writing leads to certain resolutions.  For writing, the children will write sentences, paragraphs, or whole stories based on something the class is doing, and the teachers will help guide and correct them.  There is some homework that requires knowledge of spelling words and math facts, but whether that's learned by memorization or more practice is really up to individual families.  The whole approach seems to emphasize learning by doing.  I suspect most schools teach that way now, but I'm not positive about that.

I'm not sure whether the curriculum is traditional or not.  The school's website gives a good overview of the curriculum and the general types of things children are doing --> http://www.sidwell.edu/lower_school/academics/index.aspx -- so maybe that will help you decide.

I hope this helps you.[/quote]

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