Lesley Ellis School is a private school located in Arlington, MA, serving students from the ages of 3 to 8th grade. The school combines a broad student-centered curriculum with a focus on academic excellence.
School’s Mission Statement
Lesley Ellis School prepares accomplished, inquisitive, and inspired learners by providing a challenging, student-centered, and anti-bias curriculum within a tightly connected community.
Core Values
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Accepting
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Caring
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Collaborative
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Creative
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Respectful
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Thoughtful
Academics
The school offers strong academics combined with a child-centered approach. It follows a developmental concept focusing on the different needs and unique qualities of each student. Academics at the school are ambitious and focus on exploration, expression, and individual development.
The school uses a holistic and cross-disciplinary approach to education where many subjects are connected with others. For example, art and music are often integrated into the classroom together with other subjects such as science, social sciences, and math.
The school is divided into four groups: early childhood, transitional kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. The curriculum for each group is designed to be both age-appropriate and to meet the range of needs and abilities of the individual children in each group. The base curriculum consists of art, literacy, mathematics, music, physical education, science, social studies, Spanish, and technology.
Arts and Music
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Visual Arts: Visual arts are an important element of the school’s program and are incorporated into the class, starting with early childhood students, by a professional artist or teacher. Starting at the elementary level, students work at the onsite studio, where they have access to a variety of materials and supplies and work on projects involving drawing, painting, sculpture, and other disciplines. Classroom-based studies of artists like Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollack, and Pablo Picasso are complemented by field trips to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.
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Music and Theatre: Music is an important part of the school’s education. When two music teachers work in tandem with classroom teachers, students can join two choral groups. The music curriculum at the school is based on the students’s individual aptitudes and interests, and instrumental music lessons are available for students after school.
After-School Program
The school offers an extensive and innovative after-school program with dozens of fun activities throughout the year. Younger children enjoy age-appropriate activities with themes like My hands and feet, Down on the Farm, Storytime, fun with fabric, dinosaurs, teddy bears, picnics, songs, and games.
Older students are offered numerous fun and educational activities such as bowling, moving sculptures, card games, soccer, concoctions and contraptions, making bird feeders, math club, flag football, jewelry making, pop-up books, knitting, woodworking, board games, advanced badminton, paper crafts, ski club, engineering challenge, rock climbing, and more.
Athletics
The school offers both physical education programs as well as team sports such as soccer, baseball, tennis, swimming, skiing, flag football, badminton, and more.