About Our School:

The Waits River Valley School provides educational programs for children Kindergarten through Eighth grade. Our high school students may attend any of the area's public high schools. We offer a variety of different programs, classroom arrangements, and special services to meet the needs of the diverse student body. The emphasis within all programs is on helping children achieve at high levels and to learn the content and skills that are expected in the Vermont Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities.

In addition to the documents posted on this site, more detailed documents intended for use by new staff members are currently being updated. We are also involved in a continuous effort to document and update the detailed curricular materials, teaching aids, and educational units that are the working materials our staff uses on a day-to-day basis.

For children in Kindergarten through 5th grade we provide both single grade level and multi-age classrooms to best accommodate the needs of our younger students. In the Middle School, the 6th grade classrooms are primarily self-contained. The 7th and 8th grades travel in class-sized groups among five subject area teachers in English, Mathematics, Science, Spanish, and Social Studies.

There are some general programs, for example in Mathematics and Spelling, which are coordinated across classrooms and grade levels. Generally, teachers have a great deal of discretion in designing their classroom programs to meet the needs of their children while being mindful of the Vermont Framework and the Vermont assessments. In addition, teachers meet within their grade level teams (K-2, 3-5, and 6-8) to plan and use similar strategies for teaching specific content and skills. For example, teachers in Kindergarten through second grade use the "guided reading" approach. Teachers also have developed Standards-based teaching units in Science and Social Studies, integrate reading and writing within other subject areas, and use a balanced approach that includes both teaching for conceptual understanding and the development of basic skills.

The curriculum outlines on this website present the general program within the school. In their design and content, the outlines reflect the developmental needs of children of different ages, so you will see differences in the way the various grade levels and individual classrooms are presented.

In addition to the general classroom curricula, we also have included brief descriptions of the curricula in our special subjects including music, art, and physical education. We also present an overview of special services available to children: special education, Title I, speech and language services, and the gifted and talented initiative.