Why Choose Walgrove?
Walgrove boasts a diverse student population, and we provide for all students, including students with an IEP, students who are extremely gifted and students not yet designated, a robust education that embraces each student’s uniqueness.
We employ the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) while also respecting teacher autonomy and teacher diversity. Our Constructivist teachers collaborate regularly and well with our more traditional teachers. We strive to honor one another’s differences and as well have a variety of offerings for our families.
Just as biodiversity makes our garden’s soil more nitrogen-rich, our student and teacher diversity ensures that our collective experience is more academically and socially rich.
In order to deepen the Walgrove Experience, we proffer to our students several robust enrichments — not simply as standalone offerings, but as specialties that are mindfully integrated into the curriculum.
These enrichments include:
STEAM Studio
The STEAM Studio was designed to be a place for students to develop, test and document their ideas and theories while using a variety of materials in service of projects that are relevant, engaging and challenging. In the STEAM Studio, we strive to make connections between areas of study (think Arts Integration) as well connections to the real world.
STEAM integrates science, technology, engineering, ART, and mathematics. In our STEAM Studio, that means hands-on learning experiences for students.
The two essential aspects of our teaching framework are the collaborative process and open-ended problem solving. Walgrove students complete on average a minimum of one STEAM project per month. However, some projects take longer. During the 2021-2022 school year our second- and third-grade students studied human habitats then chicken habitats and then embarked on a year-long project designing and building a 24-foot long chicken coop for our beloved hens Rose, Seline, Keven and Potato.
P.S. ARTS THEATER
P.S. Arts provides weekly theater to students in grades TK-5 and as well a culminating Spring musical. Recent productions include Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Lion King where two rotating casts comprised of a total of 77 students along with Broadway-worthy production values brought our post-COVID-school-closure community back together.
OUTDOOR EDUCATION
Our 9.77 acre campus is home to a one-acre native garden called the Wildlands and as well a sizeable organic edible garden and orchard.
Weekly, all students work with their certificated teacher and our Outdoor Education teacher Adam to plant, grow, harvest, prepare and eat a organic veggies. We also host regular Saturday volunteer days so that Walgrove families can get grounded in the garden.
LIBRARY
Weekly, our teachers bring their students to the Library where our full-time Library Aide Barbara shares stories and helps students find exciting books to check out and take home. Ms. Barbara also opens up the Library during lunch on most days to welcome students who prefer to exercise their bold imaginations indoors.
COUNCIL
Walgrove’s Council program inspires engaged, compassionate school communities through practices that connect academic and social emotional learning. Lunch time council club, classsroom level council and family/community council are practiced. For more info click HERE
UNIVERSAL TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN
Students who turn four by September 1, 2023 (and hence five by September 1, 2024) qualify for the newly expanded Universal Transitional Kindergarten. Walgrove UTK is currently taught by Ms. Alejandra Biolatto, who is a District specialist in Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), and published children’s author Ms. Zeena Pliska, who espouses a Reggio-inspired approach. Both teachers are highly creative proponents of play-based learning, Project-Based-Learning (PBL), the arts and the outdoors. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner]
