Elementary School
Independent, confident, adaptable, and engaged — that’s how La Scuola International School elementary students meet the world. We foster these qualities by activating the educational elements that uniquely inspire children’s hearts, minds, and spirits.
How the Elements of Our Approach Intertwine
Building on the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, our elementary school curriculum encourages inquiry and boundless curiosity. As experts in the Reggio Emilia Approach, we emphasize exploration, connection, expression, and the importance of the educational environment. Italian language immersion enables more neural connections to form in students’ brains, giving them better control over their attention, decision making, and planning.
The combination is more than the sum of its parts. It is a method of education found nowhere else.
Elementary School Program Exploration
Multilingualism at La Scuola
Students do not need a background in Italian to enroll in La Scuola International School. Many join us as new students of Italian.
Students start in kindergarten and first grade with Italian as the language of instruction approximately 80% of the time. Over later grades, the Italian to English ratio shifts towards more instruction in English, ending with 50% of instruction in Italian by the fifth grade.
For more detail, visit our page on language immersion.
Social Emotional Learning
Trusting, caring relationships between teachers and students secures emotional wellbeing and leads to more successful learning. Feeling supported, seen, and heard are important.
At La Scuola, the Responsive Classroom approach helps us build healthy relationships, teaching children how to listen with open hearts and open minds. We use Restorative Justice in Education to meaningfully address conflict. Mistakes are great teachers, and we help students understand the importance of owning theirs without shame.
Hubs of Discovery
Ateliers — hands-on creativity labs — nurture a lifelong love of learning. Focused on art, music, garden, and more, ateliers enliven our Silicon Valley campus and foster learning through form, function, and beauty.
Physical Education
With its expansive outdoor space including a soccer pitch, basketball hoop, and obstacle course, La Scuola students enjoy ample physical activity, learning what their bodies can accomplish and attaining new levels of personal achievement.
Transdisciplinary, Conceptual, Collaborative
Structured and purposeful inquiry, across all subject areas, is a hallmark of La Scuola education. We encourage student curiosity, questioning, exploration, and interaction with the educational environment — physically, socially, and intellectually. This means your children actively engage as the protagonists in their own learning.
La Scuola elementary classes work together to develop essential skills in traditional subjects, exceeding the requirements of Common Core standards and the Italian National Curriculum. They engage in learning across the boundaries of subject areas, following a central idea through science, literature, mathematics, art, and more, creating and sharing enduring understanding of what they learn and how they learn.
Allowing for Individuality
At La Scuola, we differentiate learning experiences to accommodate the range of abilities and learning styles of all our students. Our teachers use a wealth of assessment strategies and tools to understand how your child learns, then they apply that knowledge to inform instruction.
Experiential Learning
Learning that happens outside the classroom unlocks deeper levels of understanding and appreciation. Students in our preschool and elementary programs benefit from field trips around Silicon Valley, and hands-on learning in subjects including robotics, cooking, and more.
Stop-Motion Video
Uomini di Carta / Paper Men
See creativity and cinematography come together in this work by our 2024 Kindergarten class.
Learning, Year by Year, Across All Subjects
Because of the way La Scuola International School teachers respond to the interests and questions that students bring, each class finds its own path. Differentiated learning further tailors instruction to each student’s need, readiness, and interest level. And all this works within a curricular framework that ensures students acquire the foundational knowledge they need to succeed in high school, college, and tomorrow’s world.
Each of these curriculum documents summarizes the learning across all subject areas for each elementary grade.
Download the Curriculum Milestones and Competencies PDFs
“We watched our daughter Ava transform from a shy uncertain girl into a curious and confident child.”
—
Samson C.
La Scuola Parent