lower school
Our Mission Statement Gill St. Bernard’s School provides a diverse, balanced environment where individual potential is nurtured, mutual respect is understood, excellence is pursued and students are prepared academically, socially and ethically to thrive and lead with honor and responsibility in an interdependent and changing world.
Our Core Values • Commitment to excellence • Compassion • Courage • Respect • Honor and integrity
• Responsibility to self and others • Balanced approach to learning and life
welcome Welcome from the Director of Gill St. Bernard’s Lower School The Lower School at Gill St. Bernard’s radiates joy and excitement for learning. Our teachers nurture and build upon each child’s natural sense of wonder and innate curiosity, laying the foundation for a lifelong love of learning. Combining a deep understanding of child development, best practices and evolving curricula with a profound love for children, GSB Lower School faculty fill each day with rich and challenging learning experiences for our children. Our students love to come to school, and our warm and supportive community encourages and celebrates the intellectual risk-taking that is essential to learning and growth. Gill St. Bernard’s values balance in education, offering: • A rigorous, challenging, and responsive curriculum • Core academic subjects complemented by a rich related arts program • A school community that nurtures and celebrates good citizenship skills • An emotionally safe and welcoming environment that encourages intellectual exploration • Signature programs such as Singapore Math and Purposeful Writing • Specialized teachers for science, foreign languages, reading, art, drama and music • Recess every day and physical education four to five times each week • Classes in music and art at least twice each week • A variety of engaging, fun and inspiring after-school activities • Facilities designed to foster collaboration, creativity and problem solving through work and play • Daily activities to build fine and gross motor skills • The academic and extra-curricular resources of our beautiful 208-acre campus We work with parents throughout their children’s education, recognizing that every child’s journey is unique. Our collaborative approach strengthens our understanding of each child, enabling us to guide and support children to become their absolute best.
Honor Taft Lower School Director
Our highly trained faculty bring to the classroom dedication, compassion and a research-based and best-practices approach to teaching and curriculum development. Through small class sizes, developmentally appropriate activities, and authentic oneon-one interactions with our teachers, Lower School children develop the problem solving and collaborative skills essential to 21st-century learning.
About Honor Taft
The Lower School complements traditional core academic subjects of math, science, social studies, language arts, world languages, art and music with a variety of special events, including our annual celebration of Stone Soup and our holiday presentation of The Nutcracker.
• Our school day runs from 8:15 a.m. - 2:45 p.m. • Children may come to school as early as 7:45 a.m. and our extended-day program runs until 6:00 p.m.
Honor Taft brings to GSB her remarkable dedication to children and her passion for early childhood and elementary education. She has nearly twenty years of experience in independent schools and holds a master’s degree in educational leadership from Columbia University Teachers College and a master’s degree in education from the Bank Street College of Education. Prior to joining GSB, Taft served as assistant head of school for the Caedmon School in New York City, an independent school that comprises early childhood through grade five. Taft has served as a faculty member on the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) Leadership Institute and as a mentor for the NYSAIS (New York State Association of Independent Schools) Emerging Leaders Institute.
SCIENCE & the environment The Lower School science program builds upon each child’s innate desire to explore, discover and learn more about the world around us. Everyday occurrences generate questions that are readily incorporated into our studies of science and the environment:
• How long does it take to plant a seed and harvest a vegetable? • How long does it take to get to the moon? • What foods contain protein, and what does it do for our body? • What kinds of things live under and in a rotting log? • What do you mix to engineer your own bouncy ball? • What causes an earthquake? • Why do I get the sniffles when I get a cold? After four months in public school, our once engaged and curious first grader was starting to tune out of academics due to boredom. We transferred her to GSB this January and it has been a noticeable transformation in just two weeks. She enthusiastically shares what she learns with us on a daily basis and looks forward to returning to school every morning. The teachers, students, and parents made this mid-year transfer so easy for all of us by being so welcoming and inclusive. GSB is a wonderful environment and I would encourage any parent to visit the school, meet the staff, and most important, speak to the students and their parents! – Lower School Parent
Place-based learning comprises a critical element of the Lower School curriculum. The resources of our 208-acre campus complement, extend and reinforce the work that our young scientists undertake in the classroom. Gardens, orchards, a working farm and apiary, streams, greenhouses, and trails all provide opportunities for study and help students place information within a tangible context. Hands-on exploration and experimentation is the focus of our science program, whether classes are held in the science lab or outdoors.
Science tools including graduated cylinders, thermometers, test tubes, beakers, timers and digital microscopes are regularly used. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) activities are the core of the curriculum in which learners investigate topics in the four science domains: • Life Science • Earth and Space Science • Physical Science • Engineering and Technology Collaborative group activities throughout the year promote the development of valuable skills, including communication, cooperation and leadership, while emphasizing the scientific process and fostering problem-solving skills necessary for lifelong learning.
Character Education I have such peace of mind sending my children to Gill St. Bernard’s. The level of trust I have in the teachers, staff and administration is fabulous. I do not need to worry that my children are being well prepared for the world they will live and work in. Everything at GSB is geared toward maximum success for each individual child. The character education program is one of the best I have ever seen!
– Lower School Parent
Character development, the virtues of citizenship and social and emotional learning are integrated into daily life in the Lower School. Our teachers and staff discuss and actively model the values of responsibility, reliability, honesty, courage, citizenship, respect, caring, compassion and fairness. The children come to better appreciate the importance of these values in daily life. Character awareness is an essential component of GSB’s climate and culture. In the Lower School, we encourage children to “do the right thing even when no one is looking” and to treat one another as they would like to be treated. We foster these goals by focusing on a specific virtue each month, actively looking at ways to address situations that arise in everyday life and celebrating our students as they become increasingly caring and responsible individuals.
Computers and technology enhance everyday learning and allow students and teachers to connect with resources outside the campus. Author visits via Skype, for example, reflect our motto, The World is Our Classroom, and help students engage with the larger world.
Technology resources include classroom computers, SMART Boards, document cameras, digital cameras, FLIP/video cameras, iPads and Skype video conferencing. These 21st-century tools provide students with the ability to learn, create, connect and share in new and exciting ways. Weekly computer lab classes provide students with a strong foundation of computer and technology skills. Areas of study include keyboarding and mouse skills, file and network navigation, online safety and research, device usage and digital citizenship, blogging, document and publication design and formatting, and video, audio and slide show presentations.
Effective learning and instruction engages all cognitive functions in a child’s developing brain. The Lower School program enhances student learning by integrating the foundations of each discipline into its school-wide curriculum. Classroom teachers work in concert with related arts and science teachers to help students make real-world connections within and across curricula.
TECHNOLOGY
Singapore Math Gill St. Bernard’s is a leader in successfully adopting Singapore math, a program that helps young learners develop a deep understanding of fundamental mathematics as well as confidence in their own mathematical abilities. In addition to providing a fuller understanding of numbers and mathematical concepts, Singapore math addresses the fact that all children learn differently and allows them to master core topics before moving onto new concepts.
Singapore math takes students through a three-step learning process: concrete, pictorial, abstract. American math programs typically skip the middle step and lose students when making the jump from the concrete to the abstract. The Singapore approach, in contrast, has proven to be more effective at forming a strong foundation and promoting a broader understanding of mathematical concepts. Students begin exploration of mathematical concepts using manipulative objects including bead bracelets, multilink cubes and place-value discs. Students are taught to use strategies, such as number bonds, branching and model drawing. They also explore and play with numbers and math concepts through a variety of puzzles and games. By third grade, model drawing is taught as a tool to help students visualize more complex problems. Model drawing continues in fourth grade as a problem-solving strategy for higher level addition, subtraction, multiplication and the concepts of division, fractions and decimals. By taking the learning process to a deeper level of exploration and understanding in the earliest years, students gain a solid math foundation to support increasingly complex problem solving.
Our Lower School parents value our balanced approach to education and the warm, caring and joyful environment that our school provides.
the arts
Fine Art The Fine Arts program offers students an extraordinary opportunity to explore various media and projects in a fully equipped art studio. Students work with pastels, colored pencils, fiber, paint, print and other media in a range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional projects. Children begin by developing an understanding of the elements and principles of art. Artists and styles of art are also incorporated into studio lessons. Students are encouraged to make connections to their work in other classes, such as math, science, social studies and language arts. Displays throughout the Lower School are a testament to the breadth of our program and the creativity of our students.
Performing Arts While Gill St. Bernard’s is renowned for its award-winning Upper School performances, much of that success owes to our students discovering and fostering their talents at a very early age. An early introduction to the performing arts is essential to the development of confidence and selfawareness that can lead to greater success in academics and throughout an individual’s life. Whether singing and acting in our annual production of The Nutcracker, playing the violin at a strings recital or taking part in our afterschool offerings in theater and music, the Performing Arts program at GSB encourages all to express themselves and discover and develop their talents.
WORLD LANGUAGES The Lower School world language program is a comprehensive exploratory program for all students in primary through grade 4. The main objectives are to help each student attain an acceptable degree of proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing both French and Spanish and to introduce children to the Francophone and Hispanic/Latino cultures of the world. The program focuses on the children’s immediate surroundings and stimulates their interest through physical activities, visual aids and listening materials. Through this encouraging and engaging environment, students build confidence and a willingness to use the French and Spanish languages. The children’s first exposure to another language results in a positive attitude toward learning languages and experiencing cultures, and instills in them an appreciation for the many different non-English speaking countries around the world.
Gill St. Bernard’s School P.O. Box 604 St. Bernard’s Road Gladstone, NJ 07934 908-234-1611 Office of Admission, ext. 245 www.gsbschool.org