Engaged Learners, Imaginative Thinkers & Valued Community Members
The Upper Elementary program at Hillside Montessori of LaGrange is an extension of the student’s world. Due to this fact, emotional aspects of the student play a key developmental role. We help the student learn how to be part of a community while also focusing on the importance of work and collaboration. We do not shy away from difficult issues, but rather we try to help students learn to work through them.
Our class can be both calm and productive and lively and exciting as collaboration takes place. Each year, we collectively create a community contract, that we then look to for guidance as issues arise. Part of this process places emphasis on the student’s responsibility and ownership of the class community.
Our environment encourages curiosity and independence. Within this environment, our role as guides is to foster a love of learning and independence.
The Curriculum
3-year cycle
We strive for each student to meet his or her potential through a combination of small group lessons, large group lessons, and individualized lessons and research. Academically, students focus on a variety of subjects, all within a three-year cycle:
● Language Arts
● Mathematics
● History and Cultural Studies
● Visual and Performing Arts
● Music
● Botany
● Zoology
● Chemistry
● Physics
The Upper Elementary also spends time working with practical life skills, such as budgeting, planning a trip, and cooking. Each year, students plan and raise the funds for an overnight trip of their choice. Some of these trips include tracing the Civil Rights trail through Alabama, visiting the Center for Human Rights and meeting with a Holocaust survivor, and traveling to the Jekyll Island 4-H Center.
