COMMENTS ON GENERAL GROUPINGS
The Academy In Manayunk is a private school committed to helping students learn what is difficult for them, as well as encouraging them to soar in their areas of strength. All students who attend the Academy In Manayunk have average to above average intelligence and also have learning disabilities. Students are grouped primarily according to age and social maturity and each student's academic work is individualized to ensure academic progress. Encouraging the maximum growth of each child is our starting point at the Academy In Manayunk.

LOWER SCHOOL PROGRAM-Elementary and Intermediate
Lower school homeroom groups average twelve to thirteen students, each with one teacher and at least one assistant teacher. A 1:6 teacher student ratio is maintained for Reading (exception being JUST WORDS, which is designed for larger groups), Writing and Math. The Lower School building houses Grades 1-5 and is located at 169 Conarroe St.

Lower School is divided into Primary Grades (Grade 1-3) and Intermediate Grades (Grade 4-5).  The Intermediate Team concept (as well as the Primary Team concept) is one that has been used successfully at The Lab School for over 40 years. The essence of having students and teachers assigned to work in teams allows for the flexibility and fluidity of our small academic groupings in such areas as Wilson, reading comprehension, writing and math.  In the Intermediate Team, teachers work side-by-side with our reading specialists, education director and primary team Wilson teachers to keep the academic groups small. This is an ideal situation for our students and allows us to maximize their academic growth and achievement.

The social and emotional growth of our students is also key to their overall success.  Sally Smith was very focused on each grade level having more and more responsibility and with that, more privileges that would give them pride in moving through the grades.  Concepts such as lockers that are a "right of passage" for all members of our intermediate team, opportunities for our fifth graders to manage our school store and become student ambassadors at Open Houses all are designed with the goal to continually prepare our students for more responsibility to ease the transition to the middle school.

In our classrooms, we utilize research-based reading and spelling programs individualized to meet the needs of each child. These programs include, but are not limited to, Fundations®, Wilson JUST WORDS®, Wilson Reading Systems®, Lindamood-Bell®, and Read Naturally® to ensure that students develop decoding skills, fluency, vocabulary development and comprehension skills. Writing, mathematics and perceptual skills are developed through multi-sensory materials and individualized instruction. Geography, history and ecology are woven into the classroom design and related to reading and math. The students work individually or in small groups. Diagnostic teaching helps our teachers discover how each child learns best and how to accommodate their unique learning style. We subscribe to no one theory because no one approach or method works with all children.

All areas of art in the Lower school program deal with symbols, patterns, sequences, and problem solving; each has a series of systematic academic objectives. A capsule view of some of the latent content of our arts curriculum, modeled after the work at The Lab School of Washington® follows:

Graphic Arts: visual and visual-motor skills, spatial relationships, reading readiness;

Music: auditory perception, linking sound and symbol, decoding, encoding, rhythm, reading readiness, reading and syllabication skills;

Dance: sorting information by classifying and categorizing, language and vocabulary development, reading readiness, problem solving;

Sciences: sorting information through observations, listening, organizing, categorizing, cause-effect relationships, and environmental issues;

U.S. Geography: mapping skills, visual spatial skills, visual motor skills, problem solving, and environmental issues;

Writers Workshop: a multi-sensory approach to encourage creative writing. The students start with concrete objects and their life experience and progress on to more abstract thoughts with the use of computers and graphic organizers. In addition, students publish books, newspapers and poetry journals;

Health and Physical Education: incorporates a wide variety of developmentally appropriate activities/sports to help develop basic body movements and psychomotor skills such as coordination, balance, agility and speed/power. Students participate in sports related games and lifetime physical activities. Such activities will help the students increase their physical competence, self esteem and joy of being physically active no matter what their physical abilities may be. Emphasis is also placed on recognizing the body's response to exercise, such as heart rate and breathing rate. Health and safety concepts are studied to allow the students the opportunity to stay abreast of current trends while making intelligent decisions that have a lifelong impact.

Team Building: social and emotional wellness of our lower school students is supported through a weekly team building class taught by members of our Psychology and Speech and Language Pathology departments. Goals of team building include helping students develop their emotional intelligence, social communication skills, and their interpersonal problem solving skills.