Our Lower School Academic Program
“Deeply understanding the academic and social-emotional needs of our students is the only way to make sure we create the most engaging and challenging curriculum for every single one of our students.” – Aly Rumley, Lower School Education Head At West End Day, we know that for young learners, feeling safe, supported, and understood is essential to academic growth. Our Lower School program is designed to nurture each child’s curiosity, confidence, and love of learning while providing the social-emotional support they need to thrive. We take a whole-child approach, integrating emotional well-being with academic instruction to ensure students feel engaged, capable, and motivated.
Our tailored educational plans honor each student’s unique learning style, strengths, and interests, allowing them to build foundational skills at their own pace. Through structured support and a warm, encouraging environment, we help children develop resilience, problem-solving abilities, and the confidence to explore new challenges.
What you can expect from West End Day School:
- A nurturing, small-classroom setting with an average of eight to ten students and two classroom teachers
- Small-group instruction (three to five students) for core academic areas, including early literacy, numeracy, and foundational writing skills
- A multisensory, hands-on curriculum designed to engage young learners with different learning styles, including those with ADHD, mild-to-moderate learning disabilities, dyslexia, executive functioning challenges, and anxiety
- A strong emphasis on social-emotional learning, play-based exploration, and early self-regulation skills to support personal and academic growth
- Frequent check-ins and ongoing communication between parents, teachers, and counselors
At West End Day, we lay the groundwork for lifelong success by fostering a love of learning, emotional resilience, and a sense of belonging—so that every child feels ready to take their next step with confidence.
READING
We take a comprehensive approach to reading, using several methods of instruction based on ability level and learning style.
For students who are just starting to learn about reading and written language, we use Preventing Academic Failure (PAF), an Orton-Gillingham program. This program is one of the most effective classroom adaptations of the Orton-Gillingham method, using a multi-sensory, direct-instruction approach for phonics, spelling, reading, comprehension, and writing. In conjunction, we also integrate Heggerty, the leading provider of phonemic awareness curriculum. This intentional and systematic program is designed to supplement an existing reading program and orally and auditorily target pre-reading/phonological awareness skills, meaning that students are not asked to read or write during this part of reading!
For our students who are more fluent, we use a guided-reading approach, in which students are reading chapter books and focusing on more advanced comprehension skills as well as vocabulary expansion. This all ladders up to higher-level thinking skills, helping students to learn strategies that allow them to take on more difficult texts independently.
WRITING
Our writing program focuses on teaching students to write in a clear and organized way.Writing can be one of the most overwhelming subjects for many students, especially for those who struggle with executive functioning challenges, ADHD, dyslexia, learning differences, and even anxiety. Here at WEDS, we know tackling “the hard stuff” comes with feeling safe and understood—and that’s our first priority when we approach academics.
Using the Basic Writing Skills program, we begin with the most basic forms of writing, at the sentence level. From there, students learn to write paragraphs using graphic organizers and outlines to help structure their thoughts in a clear and concise way. We thoughtfully integrate explicit instruction on sentence construction, grammar, and the phases of writing as a way to support our students’ executive functioning needs. When students are ready for more creativity and open-ended asks; we move onto poetry, essays, research assignments, and short stories.
We utilize the Spellwell curriculum for teaching reliable patterns, phonetic elements, and rules for learning around spelling. For direct academic vocabulary instruction, Wordly Wise allows our students to learn grade-level-appropriate words that help them successfully comprehend content-area texts.
MATH
We are revolutionizing math education at our school by implementing Big Ideas Learning’s innovative Math & YOU curriculum—for both our elementary and middle school students.This modern approach to math aims to engage and inspire all students, connecting mathematical concepts to their present and future lives. With a focus on real-world applications and relatable content, this curriculum provides a strong conceptual foundation while incorporating a more digital learning experience. By providing teachers with differentiation resources, we ensure that every student receives the support they need to succeed.
Each chapter begins with a career exploration and ends with a culminating activity that brings it all together. Each chapter has learning targets, success criteria before moving on; as well as a mid-chapter test and performance task at the end of each chapter. There is also coherence through the grades - so students can see when they’ll use a certain skill in their math future!
STEM
Our STEM curriculum is taught in our state-of-the-art STEAM Center.
This space provides an essential environment for our hands-on, inquiry- and project-based curriculum. Lessons are centered around life, earth, and physical sciences, plus space and technology. Our older students study humans' impact on the Earth’s climate and biodiversity. Every spring, we have our annual STEM Fair, which is a platform for our students to showcase their individual or group science experiments.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We take a broad, humanistic approach to teaching our students about the ideas, cultures, people, and events that shape our world.
As our students move through grades, they use rich content themes to study history, geography, economics, government, and civics related to the United States and the globe. Our younger students explore different types of communities and take part in an in-depth study of New York City, while our oldest students dive into different world religions, developing case studies for each. Class field trips are a big part of the entire social studies curriculum, giving students the ability to make real-world connections to what they’re learning about in the classroom.
