Kindergarten through 6th grade is one of the most formative stages in any child’s educational career. By receiving captivating and challenging elementary school education, students will enter junior and senior high school prepared to think thoroughly and engage fully. Learn about three key aspects of our elementary school academics below.

Structured Classroom Management

While it’s often a daunting task keeping multiple learners focused on a particular learning objective, this doesn’t mean students—or teachers—need to feel overwhelmed. The age-old approach of lecturing all students at once has its place for specific purposes, but allowing students to engage in small groups, pairs, and by themselves is central to our K-6 education and academics.

Helping Students Guide Themselves

Where the educational landscape of yesteryear was limited to non-digital resources, today’s students are increasingly tech-savvy, and this plays a part in all aspects of their lives. Operating an email account, surfing the web for specific information, and finishing complex gaming or technological tasks are all part of their daily experiences and this only increases with age. Students growing up in this environment often desire school to be at least as intellectually engaging, if not more so, than their free-time activities. Our staff knows that to propel students into participation, we need to give them robust learning materials that allow them to guide themselves.

Vector utilizes a blending learning model throughout our K-6 education and academics to facilitate higher levels of student engagement. Students who are ready for advanced learning challenges should be free to progress, and students who need information presented differently can have a comprehensible learning path, too.

Frequent Formative Assessment

Another K-6 education and academic approach we use is the practice of formative assessment, not merely summative assessment. Where a summative assessment is any cognitive evaluation at the end of a topical course, formative assessments are evaluations of students’ topical understandings in the middle of a course. The reason this is so important is threefold: it gives teachers an opportunity to see if the subject matter is comprehensible, it fosters participation in students, and it allows teachers to restructure topical delivery if deemed necessary.

Want to learn more about why we emphasize individualized learning or the educational support systems that make our teaching possible? Visit our Academics page for detailed info.