Programs and Schedules

Educational Practices

At Friends Western School we incorporate our belief in the intelligence and spiritual nature of each child in our daily work and practice:

• Silent worship allows children to begin their school day with a few moments of centering and reflection.
• Flexible grouping allows children to proceed and advance at their own pace in each academic discipline.
• Physical education and outdoor education develop physical intelligence. Students participate in dance, yoga hiking, camping and sports; they learn about nature’s rules as well as the rules of games.
• Participation and instruction in drama, music, dance and visual art develops intelligences and the creative expression of emotion.
• Construction projects introduce geometric/physical concepts while developing spatial intelligence and skill in measuring, planning and negotiating.

The school programs have these principals built into the yearly and daily schedule.

The School Year

Our school year begins in September and continues through July, with four-week breaks in December and April and a six-week summer break. Studies show that this schedule, with more frequent short breaks rather than a long one in the summer, is most conducive to a child's making steady academic progress with better retention of information and skills.

The school day has a concentration in the morning on reading, math, science, writing, art and music. Also, every morning there is a 15 minute period of silent worship. Wednesday has a different structure. There are also Spanish and Yoga classes.

The afternoon program has the reading of literature and In-Session. In-Sessions are classes which focus, all week long, on projects which use the student’s skills to write a play or examine the solar system for example. This gives the students the opportunity to use their new skills in exploring major concepts. See the In-Session attachment for more detail. On Wednesday afternoon the students go to parks, wilderness areas and museums to explore the outdoor world.

Above is a sample schedule, subject to change.

In-sessions

Afternoon classes are two and one half hour "in-sessions." These are intensive blocks, lasting one or two weeks, designed to allow children and teachers to focus time and energy in a more consuming way, all in one go, rather than in smaller, shorter lessons spread out over a longer time. They are conceived in five main subject areas: language arts, math, social studies, science, and arts. Of course, when you study something deeply, you discover tasks which involve many areas of intelligence!

Click here to see the Fall 2008 In-Session Schedule.

Click here to watch the news program we produced in a recent in-session on journalism.

Gardening

Working in a garden includes all the elements of good education, much like the way beans include all the essential ingredients for nutrition. In a school where the theory of multiple intelligences undergrids our curriculum, a garden is a natural activity. It exercises natural intelligence, of course, as well as spatial, kinesthetic, logical, verbal, and interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences. In fact, if you sing songs about plants and gardens or make chants to pull weeds by, it engages them all. In addition it meets the California State Standards for life and earth science, and investigation and experimentation in several areas for several grades. It also requires the use of higher order thinking skills such as l isting attributes, analysis, research, questioning and evaluation

X-Sessions

 

We offer two-weeks of optional "extra sessions" (X-Sessions) in December and April. These one or two week long morning classes focus on a specific interest or area of study: e.g.: Spanish emersion/cooking, scientific exploration, theater arts, making books, designing and building furniture, etc.

 

 

 

 

Computer Lab and Technology Education

We use the computer lab in the MILL for instruction and research. To help the students become skilled in using the computer as a tool, we offer a well-rounded instructional program that includes managing information, producing different kinds of texts, sorting data, and working with images and sounds.

Even the youngest children can learn to:

• Make a database of their favorite books by title and author;
• Write, save and print a poem and find it later;
• Make a simple slide show of drawings or photographs.
• Learn how to use the Internet safely