Investigating Deeply A message for families with children in Kindergarten through Grade 4.
I’m delighted to hear that you have requested to learn more about Moorestown Friends. As Director of the MFS Lower School, I’m writing to share with you my thoughts about what makes our school special, and to invite you to come visit us and see for yourself. At Moorestown Friends, we aspire to educate young people who are highly capable and deeply thoughtful, passionate learners and compassionate human beings. In short, as we often say, we hope that our students will grow to have tough minds and tender hearts. And from the earliest grades, this goal shapes our students’ experience. This means we stress not only cognitive development, but a child’s complete growth as a young person. Furthermore, we work to nurture not only academic skills, but also higherlevel intellectual skills. This is an essential point. Elementary schools are often deemed successful if their students can read above grade level and score well on math tests. Our children routinely do both these things—but they also do so much more.
We teach young children to observe, record their thoughts, and frame original questions. We teach them the skills of research— where to go to find the answers they need, how to evaluate the information they uncover, how to synthesize and apply it, how to communicate it to others. Students and teachers in the Lower School embark on focused long-term investigations. They learn about space exploration, or life among the Lenape Indians, or all the steps of staging a play. At first, these may seem fairly typical units, but the quality and richness of the experiences truly set them apart.
First, we take inspiration from our students’ interests and questions. Our investigations don’t take the form of packaged lessons on Xeroxed sheets. They are journeys of discovery, launched because children find something they want to know more about.
Second, we dive deeply. When a class transformed one of their favorite books into a play, they didn’t simply take to the stage; they crafted a script, built the scenes, took a field trip to our Upper School to tour a real lighting booth and interview the Upper School theater director, and even learned about event ticketing from a parent who manages a major arena.
Third, we make connections. These connections might bring together ideas from art, math, library, and technology as we explore Native Americans. Or they may be the personal connections that happen when an Upper School physics teacher and team of robotics students visit to help us design lunar rover modules.
110 E. Main Street
Moorestown, NJ 08057-2949 Phone: (856) 235-2900
www.mfriends.org