Prime Life Skills

(For Pre-Prime Open Circle, click here.)

Philosophy

The Sage School Life Skills curriculum is designed to complement the school's mission to appropriately educate academically gifted children. Via daily academic instruction combined with skill-specific lessons, students at The Sage School begin to learn the practical as well as social and emotional competencies needed to be responsible citizens of the society around them. The school understands that well-rounded students must have information about health and wellness issues they face in their everyday lives; thus the school has a Wellness curriculum in addition to the Homeroom Advisor program.

As outlined in the school's mission statement, the life skills curriculum depends on active communication between the School and students' parents/guardians. The school believes ongoing conversation that involves several arenas of students' lives best serves the students' physical, social and emotional needs.

The school recognizes that children often learn critical physical, social, and emotional skills through group meetings and discussions. Thus, students meet as homerooms or in Advisor Groups on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis to develop their abilities. As students move to the Middle School, these homeroom meetings continue , and are complemented by a more age-specific Wellness curriculum.

Content

The life skills curriculum is designed to further students' knowledge and understanding of themselves and their place in the world around them. To that end, Prime students begin by learning about interpersonal communication, self-reflection, problem solving, decision-making, conflict resolution, and appropriate self-expression. Knowing that parent-child separation issues can be challenging at this developmental stage, students and parents are supported in their adjustment to transition. Students also work on more practical skills such as handwriting, reading for pleasure, taking turns, personal and community safety, and personal organization. Each student in the classroom has a weekly job that teaches him/her about the importance of working together as a community. Students also begin to write journals as a means of written self-expression.

Skills

As part of their life skills curriculum, students learn many social skills. For example, they learn to meet others and introduce themselves, they learn about active listening and holding a conversation with peers as well as adults, and they recognize how to work cooperatively in a group. Once these foundational skills are in place, teachers begin to work on higher order skills such as problem solving and decision-making. Students work toward mastery of these skills as individuals and also as members of a group. Students also learn to resolve conflict in appropriate ways, and then to communicate assertively and effectively , even in the face of conflict.

In addition to the social/emotional life skills, all students work on building academic skills such as organization, academic goal setting, managing homework compliance and other student life proficiencies.

Materials

In the Prime Division, teachers use the Open Circle program as a foundation for their lessons around social and emotional growth. Open Circle is a social competency program supported by the Stone Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. At all levels character education books and programs provide the teachers with a wealth of resources to use while teaching life skills. Videos and field trips are other teaching tools, and the school counselor provides support and resources as well. Children's and young adult literature can also be the basis for group discussion as can students' personal experiences. The Sage School teachers are adept at connecting personal experience to classroom learning; the life skills curriculum proves to be no exception.

Pre-Prime Open Circle

  In Pre-Primes children are provided many opportunities to develop social skills. They learn to solve interpersonal problems through co-operation, negotiation, and talking with the person involved. Teachers facilitate the development of these positive social skills at all times. We use the Open Circle Program which is our social competency curriculum to reach our social skills goals.

One of the most valuable components of Open Circle is the class meetings. During these meetings children have the opportunity to discuss their feelings about school, home, and everyday happenings.