探花系列

In our Lower School, students are carefully guided to master the foundational skills of reading and writing. Our approach emphasizes careful execution and deliberate practice; methods of mastery that yield long-term benefits in analytical thinking, composition, and reading comprehension. As they respond to a variety of texts across a broad curriculum, they sing, ponder, explore, calculate, narrate, write, draw, paint, recite, and discuss. Students practice narrating back "living" texts, a pedagogical routine that cultivates charitable reading, attentiveness, and accurate interpretation. Students are intentionally encouraged to form virtuous moral and intellectual habits as they interact with the curriculum and participate in the broader school community, ultimately laying the foundations for wise character, rooted in grace. They have ample opportunities to learn outside the classroom as well, with field trips including (but not limited to) the Art Institute of Chicago, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute), the Wade Center, the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Brookfield Zoo, and the Morton Arboretum, not to mention daily outdoor play, as well as physical education. Daily, they immerse themselves in the Bible through study and prayer, and with faculty and staff guidance, they uncover God's sovereign hand at work throughout history.