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WELCOME TO EDS LOWER SCHOOL FIRST GRADE | SECOND GRADE | THIRD GRADE | FOURTH GRADE | FIFTH GRADE FIRST GRADE PROGRAM - Back to top First Grade is an exciting year for our students! The children are eager to wear uniforms and give up naps . . . just like the big kids! Our highly individualized First Grade program offers children many opportunities to grow and develop those skills that will help them on their way to becoming the “big kids.” In addition to the rapid development of cognitive abilities, this year is one of tremendous physical, social, and emotional growth. First graders are maturing rapidly, and this is an excellent year for character-building lessons that will continue throughout the EDS experience. The most recent Stanford Achievement scores indicate that our first graders test an average of one and a half to two grade levels above the national norms in reading and math. These are the building blocks for a successful academic career. The Reading and Language Arts program continues the heavy emphasis on phonics-based lessons begun in PK4 and Kindergarten and accelerates learning with many opportunities for writing, teacher dictation, and oral reading. Children read in class, read individually to the teacher and aide, and read at home. Teacher-led reading lessons include systematic, direct instruction of skills and phonics. English grammar and mechanics are taught systematically as well. In addition, daily journal writing provides an individual phonics and grammar lesson for each child. Students work daily in an independent workbook on their individual levels. The D’Nealian Handwriting program is used to teach the handwriting skills that are a bridge to cursive writing taught in the second grade. The Accelerated Reader program encourages reading and increases reading ability by giving the young reader the confidence to read more challenging books. Reading levels are evaluated four times a year using the STAR Reader diagnostic tool. Because the strongest educational foundation for life-long learners is the ability to read, speak, and write clearly, these skills are heavily emphasized. Manipulatives, games, and practice are all part of the diverse approach to the Mathematics program. The emphasis on our program is on developing number sense and understanding mathematical concepts rather than just learning algorithms, as recommended by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Problem solving skills are fostered by traditional “story problems” and direct instruction of logic and analogy. Parents are amazed that their children enjoy math and are not fearful of the various skills introduced during the year. Manipulatives are always available as the children learn about money, time, measurement, fractions and probability, geometry, graphing and data collection, and place value, as well as computation. Mad Minutes will become part of everyday conversation with your first grader as he masters math facts. This is a special part of the first grade math program that makes learning fun while reinforcing basic skills. Science and Social Studies units allow children to explore the world around them through hands-on activities, field trips, and special class work. Science units include Plants; Animals; The Sky and Weather; Caring for the Earth; Matter, Matter Everywhere; and On the Move. Our biome, the special habitat first graders study, is Grasslands. Social Studies topics include Living in a Community; School Days; In and Around the Land; My Country, My Heroes; My World Near and Far; and map skills. A Health program helps students learn about nutrition, safety, fitness, and substance abuse prevention as well as including activities to help children make good decisions, set goals, and resolve conflicts. A weekly subscription to Time for Kids offers current topics for study. The Religion program includes Chapel, Eucharist, and weekly classroom lessons, as well as the many opportunities that arise during a first grader’s day to discuss virtues, choices, and character development. In conjunction with the Religion program, first grade students are encouraged to participate as a class in outreach projects. Some past projects have included donations to the Heifer Project, sponsoring a child in Haiti through Tend My Lambs, raising money for LaPaw to help homeless animals, and working with 8th graders planting to restore the grasslands in Louisiana. This allows the children to see what a difference even a first grader can make. EDS offers wonderful enrichments in addition to the regular classroom program. Each week the children attend classes in music, art, physical education, library, computer, and Spanish. Field trips typically include a ballet, musical, or play, museums, and special events that are offered to area schools. Our traditional Mothers’ Day Tea is a great favorite, and our end of the year performance of The Grouchy Ladybug and Where the Wild Things Are is always a treat. Each activity in first grade is designed to develop a skill that will be used for life. The skills are presented to reach all learners-visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. They are reinforced in a manner that will generate interest and curiosity to seek more knowledge. This is the beginning of happy life-long learners! SECOND GRADE PROGRAM - Back to top All instruction is designed to teach the whole child. Focus is placed on the basics (Reading and Math) with a liberal amount of Language Arts, Science and Social Studies. All seat work and learning centers are geared as enrichment, as well as an extension of the curriculum base. Regular instruction, as well as enrichment, has the goal of helping the second grade child not only to obtain literacy, but also to gain knowledge for a lifetime, and to see learning as a joyful experience. In Spelling, we use daily reinforcement of word meaning, word recognition and word usage, as well as weekly tests of children's word knowledge and composition. Oral Reading, comprehension, and word knowledge are stressed with the usage of a designated phonics instruction program. The basal reader program is one of the many different approaches used to match the individual learning styles of each student. In addition to our basic reading program, students participate in the Accelerated Reader Program to help track comprehension and vocabulary skills. In Math, a general review of addition and subtraction facts, place value, ordinal numbers and other cumulative math skills begin the year. Addition and subtraction regrouping, measurement, and basic geometry skills, as well as multiplication, are introduced. Progress is determined on an individualized basis, with remediation added where and when needed. Math manipulative help reinforce these concepts. In Language Arts, daily practice in handwriting in both manuscript and cursive enables students to write neatly and legibly and constitutes the bulk of our program. Daily discussion and practice in distinguishing parts of speech, types of sentences and friendly letter writing are the main topics in English. The Science program includes an overall view of physical environment, animal and plant, science and health, and the human body. Instruction is basically hands-on and guided discussion. Emphasis is placed on units of study in the areas of earth science. A special unit deals with the study of the pond biome and its surrounding environment. A new pond with a waterfall, indigenous iris, cattails, pond lilies, tadpoles, crawfish and fish forms the basis of study for the second grade unit on the pond biome. It is situated between the music building and the middle school. Having a permanent pond feature allows the children to observe the seasonal changes on a weekly basis. The fragile balance of this pond is explored and it allows the students to see first hand how important water quality is and how the animals and plants work together to form this unique water environment. Our Social Studies program is an integrated blend of geography, economics, history and civics. All units encourage interaction within different environments using field trips and outside resources. A visit to a factory site and the Port of Lake Charles, help bring the pages of our book to life. A link to wonderful literature adds to the cross curriculum approach to this subject. Our exciting field trips include:
THIRD GRADE PROGRAM - Back to top In third grade we strive to make the students more independent, responsible and, of course, more knowledgeable. Along the way, we hope the students have some fun, collect some good memories, and are HAPPY! Our READING program encompasses several approaches: reading from the basal, reading chapter books/novels, and reading to the children a variety of books and stories. Numerous sources are used to hone reading skills. The Accelerated Reading program gives the children an opportunity to keep track of their outside reading as well as to read at their "comfort zone." Our big novel in third grade is LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This delightful story ties in so well with many of our topics in Social Studies and, as such, is part of an integrated Reading/Social Studies unit. In regard to reading, our goal in third grade is to inspire a love for the written word and create enthusiastic lifetime readers! The ENGLISH program combines the basics of grammar...usage and mechanics. Our goal is to have students take the information gained in English class and use it in their daily speaking and writing. Practice in grammar includes skills drills as well as beginning sentence diagramming. The children think diagramming is so GREAT!!! Creative writing gives the students the opportunity to tap the imagination while using knowledge from all areas of the Language Arts program. Using a fourth grade level textbook, English is an accelerated area of the third grade curriculum. SPELLING is another accelerated area in the third grade program. Using lessons in a consumable fourth grade level workbook, spelling words are grouped into categories using spelling rules to help the third grader apply the rule rather than memorize a list of words. Added each week are challenge words and sentences that serve to stimulate the speller. Students enjoy a variety of ways of practicing the words each week...the "word finds" is the favorite!!! Mastery of the rules learned in Spelling should help unlock the mysteries of spelling of the words in the English language! Our goal in SPELLING is for children to transfer correctness in Spelling to all areas of endeavor. The MATH program provides the student with an opportunity to learn math through involvement, understanding, practice, and application. We begin the year with a review of addition and subtraction facts and skills. Upon completion of the review, we begin working on the two big areas of mastery for the third grader, multiplication and division facts. The third grader will also be introduced to "real" multiplication (several digits times one and two digits) and "real" division (a number containing several digits divided by one digit). An introduction of geometry and fractions, continued work on measurement, graphing, numeration, time and money are also a part of our math program. Math is so much more than the computation of numbers. We give students many opportunities to develop logical and creative thinking skills while solving math-related problems. We also provide opportunities for cooperative and educational games, the use of manipulatives, and real-life applications in mathematics lessons. Our goal here is to have students deepen their understanding of mathematics concepts as opposed to merely memorizing facts and algorithms. Lastly, the beauty of Math and the spirit of Art combine so naturally that we make several ART MATH projects each year! It is our hope that students in third grade make strides in their ability to manipulate numbers and in thinking mathematically and logically. Above all, we hope the anxieties so often associated with this area of study are replaced with a LOVE and APPRECIATION of the MATHS! The SOCIAL STUDIES program includes skill lessons involving maps, diagrams, timelines, and graphs that bring a better understanding of the tools used in Social Studies. We then turn to early communities of America...Mesa Verde, Jamestown, and San Francisco. The establishment of the United States of America, the movement westward, and inventions that improved our way of living are another focus of study. To make Social Studies come alive for the students, we have several "you were there" movies, we read many books which deal with the events and people that made history, and we have many projects that give the students a hands-on opportunity to relate to the subject matter. We hope that the students come away from third grade with some knowledge of the world around them and will never think that history is only a bunch of dates to be memorized! SCIENCE is EXCITING! Our Science curriculum covers life science, physical science, earth science, and health science. These areas are explored by the learning of factual information in a discussion type environment and through hands-on experiments and projects (our classrooms are a garden when we study plants!) which allow the student to see science at work in our world. A perennial favorite of third graders is the study of the Solar System and we've recently added a "Star Gazing and S'Mores Night" which our third graders absolutely loved. Of course, everyone looks forward to the display of projects the third graders create during their study of the Solar System! THE DESERT is the biome concentration for third grade. This gives us the opportunity to learn about the various deserts and types of deserts of the world. We explore the animals and plants of the desert and learn about the adaptations necessary for survival in this arid part of the world. Since there are no deserts readily available in southwest Louisiana, a sandy area outside our classrooms serves as home to several desert type plants allowing a sampling of the desert environment. Included in the study are some great hands-on activities...sand painting and other art projects, a nifty desert jigsaw puzzle, cactus experiments to name only a few! Scientific thinking and understanding has given us so much in this world. We hope our students will begin to observe and appreciate the beauty of Science in the world around them. To round out the program the students are challenged to become physically healthy in PHYSICAL EDUCATION, and to acquire an appreciation of the fine arts is developed in the areas of MUSIC and ART. The ever-changing world of TECHNOLOGY is presented in the "state-of-the-art" Computer Lab and in a well-equipped library. Third grade students have the opportunity to develop a working knowledge of the SPANISH language. Enrichment programs offered at EDS are second to none!!! Third Grade Extras:
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