Upper Primary

9-12 years

Playgroup
18 months - 3 years
Junior Primary
3 - 6 years
Middle Primary
6 - 9 years
Upper Primary
9 -12 years
Adolescent Program
12 - 15 years
Education Support
3 - 15 years

"I can decide and think for myself"

In Upper Primary, children aged 9 to 11 delve deeper into Cosmic Education. With growing powers of intellect, imagination, creativity, sense of justice and an evolving conscience, your child’s mentality now includes: “I can decide and think for myself!” and a desire to function as a member of a team.

Confident explorers

The Upper Primary curriculum aims to develop qualities of self-confidence, self-direction, self-discipline and persistence, in tandem with the ability to concentrate, to move with coordination, to interact with others with grace and courtesy, and to take responsibility for the order of the environment and for their own learning.

Children are given the freedom to learn through their own activity and exploration, and, in the process, encourages a child’s desire to know more and grow in their independence.

Common educational elements in this Montessori stage of development include:

 

  • Geography
  • Identity and interconnectivity
  • Moral order and fairness
  • Problem-solving (educationally and relationally)

Stamina and challenge

In the second plane of development, children have greater stamina since less energy is used for physical growth. This stamina can manifest as an increased capacity to sustain intellectual work, and they become more receptive to intellectual learning than at any other time in their lives.

They are also more adventurous and daring, often willing to try physically-challenging activities. To encourage their expanding independence and curiosity, we leverage on our surrounding environment for daily activities, for example, beach walks, runs and bike rides.

Growing beyond the classroom

Students in Upper Primary are encouraged to think beyond the classroom and become global citizens who contribute in a positive way to the larger community. They have the opportunity to apply tools learned in the classroom to real life situations. This includes organising many events such as plays, bake sales, fundraising events, sports days, dance troupe and Beehive Environmental Club (BEC).

Core learning areas

In Upper Primary, students explore the theories of the development of oral language in humans, as well as revisiting the story of the creation of the alphabet. By now, students have developed a greater level of fluency in both their reading and writing capacities, which allow them to access a wider variety of texts. In grammar, students explore a higher classification in terms of functions of words, as well as analysis of simple, compound and complex sentences. Writing proceeds from short stories to composition, understanding the structure of paragraphs and various genres. Students also begin to analyse and appreciate an author’s style and voice, and begin to develop a style of their own.

Students move to increasingly abstract work in arithmetic. This includes long multiplication and long division, laws of operations, multiples, factors, divisibility, group division, fractions (both common and decimal and their related operations), squares and cubes of numbers, powers of numbers and exponential notation, an exploration of alternate number systems (other than 10), squaring and square root, cubing and cube root, signed numbers, measurement, ratio and proportion, beginning algebra and word problems.

Upper Primary students build upon their solid understanding of geometrical concepts. They use their understanding of equality, similarity and equivalence, along with their knowledge of plane figures to explore the concepts of area and volume, developing an in-depth understanding of how the formulae work. This includes an exploration of Pythagorean theorem and Euclidian proofs.

Geography is explored through the use of stories, experiments, charts and children’s activities. Geography study has two main sections: natural geography and human geography.

Natural geography now examines the dynamic interaction of abiotic forces; the water cycle, forces of erosion, the work of wind, the work of water.

Human geography now details how people have met their needs while living in different zones on the Earth, the interdependence of humans in society, patterns of human migration and economic geography.

Once again, Biology is explored through the use of stories, experiments, charts and children’s activities. Upper Primary students now examine the classification of six kingdoms, as well as the interaction between biotic and abiotic factors and the study of Ecology.

In Botany, students are introduced to more advanced classification work, not only examining types of plants, their parts and functions, but also adaptations to different environments.

In Zoology, students mirror the advanced classification of Botany with the same in Zoology. Students also examine and compare the internal systems (respiratory, circulatory etc) of the 5 vertebrate classes, as well as investigating the evolution and characteristics of invertebrate classes.

Once again, the Montessori History curriculum spans geological time, prehistory and history proper, to give students in this plane of development the greatest whole to orient themselves in. Stories, timelines and charts aid inform these presentations.

Geology includes The story of the coming of the universe (or big bang), the creation of the Earth, changes in the Earth over time which allowed for the coming of life on Earth.

Prehistory includes the coming of life to Earth, the appearance of human beings, and the timeline of humans ending in the agricultural revolution.

History proper begins with the story of the alphabet, the development of civilisations, a study of migration, the story of industrialisation and the growth of culture to the present day. Once again the fundamental needs of humans are used as keys to examine different human groups through time and space.

Our Upper Primary Teachers

Jessica Henke

La Casa della Pace

Samantha Abrahams

La Casa del Mare

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