4-5 Division Philosophy

The philosophy of the 4-5 Division at SCDS is based on a commitment to maximizing the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development of the 9-11 year old child. We strive to fulfill this commitment by providing an environment that is challenging yet safe for each child to take personal risks and make developmental leaps.

It was the dream of Lucile Beckman, the school’s first director, to create a school in which children of high creative and intellectual promise are guided by dedicated teachers who understand that education involves honing intellectual strengths while simultaneously encouraging a love of discovery. Our flexible and dynamic approach to teaching inspires our students to engage in divergent thinking, construct ingenious inventions, and express their ideas creatively. We involve students in direct experiences that enable them not only to find but also to create for themselves the joy of discovery that will endure for a lifetime.

Fourth and fifth grade teachers at SCDS recognize and honor the developmental needs of this age group. Our goal is not to move children quickly through a standard curriculum, but rather to foster in them the ability to approach challenges with self-efficacy and independence while helping them to build positive self-esteem, effective social skills, and strong personal character. The markedly increased centrality of the peer group and consequent changes in definitions of self through interactions with others are hallmarks of social and emotional development of this age level. Our dedicated 4-5 teachers work together to provide a learning environment that is supportive and nurturing of our students as they navigate more complex territory, both inwardly and with their peers. We strive to cultivate compassionate human beings as well as scholarly minds and offer our students many opportunities to develop empathy, integrity, and kindness in their personal, academic, and community-based endeavors. Our goal is for our students’ choices to reflect an internalized commitment to humanitarian action.

We believe that children at SCDS enter the fourth grade cognitively ready to deal with more abstract concepts and a degree of intellectual ambiguity. Our teachers draw from a deep knowledge of their academic fields to design unique, inquiry-based curricula. Our students learn to question, analyze, and respond using subjectspecific frameworks for demonstrating knowledge. The challenging, specialized curriculum in the 4-5 Division makes the most of the child’s nascent use of inductive and deductive reasoning, growing ability to plan strategically and apply such strategies to novel tasks, and increased processing speed and efficiency. Homework at this level is primarily geared towards basic skills practice and refinement in mathematics and language arts. We generally assign students from 45 to 60 minutes of homework daily. Students are also occasionally asked to work on aspects of various, on-going academic projects in all subject areas at home.

Our cohesive team of teachers in the 4-5 Division consciously strives to create a learning atmosphere that allows faculty and students to cultivate deep intellectual and personal connections that enhance learning and productivity over the course of our time together. Just as our teachers reflect their expertise in the thoughtful development and implementation of their lessons, so does the child learn to apply an “expert” approach to intellectual challenges through guided exploration, structured experimentation, and focused academic study.

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