Village School Differences

In each of their home-groups children will be working at different stages of learning for each subject, according to their individual development. For instance, a child may be exploring in one section of mathematics while practicing skills in another.

The academic program is designed to be open ended to allow for these different developmental stages.

Learning for the children is therefore a mixture of individual lessons, small group lessons based on ability and whole group discussions and activities that promote cooperative learning experiences as well as social and emotional growth.

Therefore we do:

• Have individual goals for each child.
• Spend at least half of our teaching time working on a one to one basis to encourage each child's special talents so that he/she experiences success.
• Prepare and present different tasks to each child, which are open-ended tasks relating to common themes so that the children can work alongside each other and yet achieve at their own academic level.
• Apply different teaching styles and strategies according to the children's needs and preferred learning styles.
• Discuss with children how they learn best so that they can 'own' their learning.
• Have an expectation that at the end of a teaching term or year, the children will have developed in different ways and achieved at different academic levels.
• Measure a child's progress by how far he/she has come, not by how they compare with their peers.
• Ensure the children are grouped according to where they are socially at ease.

We don't:

• Teach new skills to an entire class to save time.
• Compare children's progress with others, using terms like 'behind' or 'ahead'.
• Display individual scores for comparison.
• Expect the same volume of work from every child.
• Expect the same level of understanding from every child.
• Have preconceived expectations for outcomes of learning.
• Withhold teaching a concept on the grounds of inappropriate age when the child is showing an interest in learning.
• Give 'prescriptive' instructions that result in identical end products for art/craft, model making etc.
• Have a school uniform.

The primary years are crucial.

How children 'feel' about school is the critical factor for their academic, social and emotional growth.

Children learn through play so we design learning themes which include role plays, re-enactments, inventions and plenty of activities initiated and owned by the children.

Children need to follow their individual learning paths so we plan learning themes around the interests and learning stages of each child.

Children need to be heard and respected so we have daily homegroup meetings and weekly whole school meetings chaired by the children themselves.

e-mail: Village School Last updated 22nd January 2007. Copyright © 2007 Village School Inc.