A Different Kind of Elementary Education

In literacy, we use a workshop approach to help children become confident readers, thoughtful writers, and increasingly independent learners.

We explicitly teach strategies that real readers and authors use, often through familiar books and mentor texts. A writing lesson might examine how an author crafts a strong lead, develops a scene, uses dialogue, controls pacing, or uses nonfiction text features. Children see the technique in authentic writing, practice it, and then decide how to use it in work of their own.

Children read real books, talk about literature with peers, and make meaningful choices about what they read and write. As they grow, we move from foundational skills into deeper comprehension, inference, analysis, vocabulary, structure, voice, craft, and increasingly purposeful communication.

Through individual conferences and targeted small groups, we focus on the particular skill most likely to move a child forward. An advanced reader may be refining a comprehension strategy, while a sophisticated, imaginative writer may still be strengthening conventions.

We are equally intentional about foundational literacy. Children may enter Kindergarten just beginning to connect letters and sounds, already reading, or anywhere in between. We teach systematic phonics, decoding, fluency, and word study at the level and pace appropriate to each child. Rather than simply memorizing the same spelling list, children learn patterns and strategies they can apply to unfamiliar words and authentic reading and writing.

Writing also has a real audience. Our WHPS Publishing Celebrations give children opportunities to share finished work with classmates, teachers, and families, building pride, confidence, and a genuine sense of authorship.

Our goal is for children to take the strategies they learn and use them independently in a new book, a new piece of writing, or an idea entirely their own.

At WHPS, we teach mathematics as much more than learning procedures or getting the right answer. We want children to reason, make connections, explain their thinking, and apply what they know to problems they have not seen before.

Our program is built around Singapore Math, an internationally respected approach centered on conceptual understanding, critical thinking, and transferable problem-solving strategies.

A hallmark of Singapore Math is its Concrete → Pictorial → Abstract progression. We move from hands-on experiences, to visual models, to increasingly abstract mathematics, helping children understand not simply how a procedure works, but why. Tools such as bar modeling make complex relationships visible and give children strategies for tackling unfamiliar, multi-step problems.

The curriculum also gives us different ways to increase challenge. A child who is still developing a particular skill but ready for greater complexity can explore it through deeper, more demanding problems. When a child has mastered the underlying concepts and is ready to move forward, we can accelerate into increasingly advanced mathematics.

Our goal is not simply to produce children who are good at math. We want to develop flexible, confident thinkers who can approach something difficult, make sense of it, and find a way forward.

At WHPS, science is something we do, not simply something we read about.

We bring physical science to life through classroom investigation, with engineering experiences beginning in first grade. Life science has an extraordinary resource right on campus: our teaching zoo and Science & Nature Center. Beginning in second grade, every student also has a weekly Maker class focused on hands-on design, building, testing, troubleshooting, and refinement.

We teach children to observe closely, ask questions, make predictions, investigate, gather evidence, analyze results, revise explanations, and communicate what they discover. As they grow, the work develops from firsthand observation and classification into experimental design, systems thinking, evidence-based explanation, and increasingly complex ideas across the sciences.

Along the way, children discover that science rarely follows a perfectly straight line. Evidence may challenge an assumption. An experiment may need to be redesigned. A good question may lead to another one.

We want children to know science, but also to learn how scientists think.

At WHPS, we explore history and the humanities as more than a single story to memorize. We want children to become curious investigators of people, cultures, ideas, and the forces that shape our world.

We explore history and current events from multiple perspectives, examining evidence and asking whose voices are represented, whose may be missing, and how the same event can look different depending on where you stand.

As children grow, we ask increasingly complex questions. Why do societies change? What leads people to challenge the status quo or push for reform and revolution? How do geography, culture, power, and ideas shape what happens next? And what can the past help us understand about the world today?

In Upper Elementary, larger projects bring that inquiry together. In our Finding Your Roots project, students investigate immigration and American history while researching their own family stories, interviewing relatives, examining historical sources, and connecting individual experiences to larger patterns of migration, culture, identity, and historical events.

Through research, literature, primary sources, discussion, projects, and presentations, we help children understand history as something to investigate rather than simply receive.

Our goal is not to tell children what to think about the world. It is to give them the knowledge, curiosity, and critical-thinking skills to think deeply for themselves.

The world our children will enter is changing quickly. The technologies and careers may change, but their ability to understand themselves, work with others, adapt, communicate, solve problems, and keep learning will endure.

We teach these skills intentionally through a developmental progression grounded in child development research. Even in TK, children begin reflecting on their strengths, behavior, and friendships, then work with teachers and families to identify one meaningful goal they can practice with support from the adults in their lives.

As children mature, we give them increasing ownership of that process. They set SMART goals, track progress in Leadership Notebooks, and eventually lead Student-Led Conferences with their teachers and families. That is why students have a seat at the table in conversations about their own growth.

We intentionally evolve the WHPS experience as children grow. For decades, we have followed our graduates into middle school and worked with receiving schools to understand what students need to thrive there. We use that knowledge to thoughtfully plan backward from 5th Grade.

In Lower Elementary, TK–1st Grade, we focus on strong academic foundations while helping children develop independence, curiosity, confidence, and a love of learning.

Beginning in 2nd Grade, we gradually change the structure. Children begin working with different teachers, with more opportunities for learning across our 2nd/3rd and 4th/5th Grade communities. As they grow, children may spend more of their academic time in flexible, multi-age groups with others working toward similar goals, allowing readiness and learning needs to matter more than grade level alone.

By 4th and 5th Grade, we intentionally introduce more of the rhythms children will encounter in middle school. Students rotate among teachers and subjects, manage increasingly complex projects and responsibilities, and take greater ownership of their learning.

The transition is intentional and gradual. Along the way, children develop greater independence, organization, self-advocacy, collaboration, communication, and ownership of their learning. By the time middle school arrives, many of its rhythms, responsibilities, and expectations already feel familiar.