A parent’s guide

The six years, kindergarten to 5th grade

Each year at the school has a purpose. Here is what each one is for, what your child does, and what they leave with. Specific programs will be chosen by our Head of School; this is the shape of the six years.

Kindergarten

Belonging and beginning

What it’s for: Learning to be part of a group, to love books, and to feel at home outdoors in every season.
What your child does: A home visit from their teacher before school starts. Daily phonics taught explicitly and playfully, stories read aloud, math with real objects, and long stretches of play. Their own outdoor area with a mud kitchen and things to climb. Serving lunch to classmates. A sit spot they return to every day.
What they take away: Reading simple books, counting and comparing with understanding, putting on their own rain gear, naming ten living things on campus, and a first portfolio they can walk you through themselves.

1st grade

Reading takes off

What it’s for: Becoming a reader.
What your child does: Phonics through the full code, fluency practice with partners, and first real writing — sentences that say something true. Number bonds and place value, solved with drawings and blocks. First tools in woodworking. Weekly philosophy discussions begin.
What they take away: Reading early chapter books independently, writing a clear paragraph, adding and subtracting within 100 with understanding, and a nature journal with a full season recorded.

2nd grade

Fluency and craft

What it’s for: Doing things well.
What your child does: Fluent reading built through rich content units. Writing revised through kind, specific peer critique for the first time. Multiplication as groups and arrays. Knives and saws under supervision, fire-building with the group, and care of the school's garden.
What they take away: Fluent reading, a piece of writing taken through three drafts, real multiplication and division sense, a finished wooden object they made, and the habit of asking “what would make this better?”

3rd grade

Reading to learn

What it’s for: Using reading and math to find things out.
What your child does: Cursive. Deep science and history units, with the French Broad watershed as a year-long thread. Fractions with understanding and multi-step problems. Citizen science with real data, and a first overnight trip.
What they take away: Independent research from books, a field report with real observations and data, fraction sense, and a first long project presented to a public audience.

4th grade

Independence

What it’s for: Working with growing independence in a small, close crew.
What your child does: Longer expeditions with fieldwork and expert interviews. Essays and reports. Multi-digit operations, fractions and early data analysis. Leading a class meeting, mentoring a kindergarten reading buddy, and woodworking projects they design themselves.
What they take away: A well-organized research report, confidence with all four operations, a project planned and seen through, and a younger child they are responsible for.

5th grade

The Passage

What it’s for: Proving readiness — to themselves, their family and their middle school.
What your child does: The oldest in the school, running assemblies and welcoming new families. Decimals, ratio and early algebraic thinking; long-form writing. A year-long project of their own choosing, presented to a panel of teachers, family and an outside expert. A multi-day wilderness expedition to close the year.
What they take away: A portfolio and capstone project that middle schools — French Broad River Academy among them — will recognize as the work of a capable, self-directed student.

Every year: two student-led conferences, written learning stories every few weeks, two public exhibitions of children's work, and seasonal festivals.

Want this for your family?

Tell us which grade your child would enter in fall 2028 — it helps us plan every year above.

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