Academics
Sterne's Lower School is an elementary school model for grades 4–5 that offers a standards-based academic program with an emphasis on foundational literacy and math skills. Rather than traditional grade-level placement, students learn in small, instructional-level-based cohorts, ensuring that they receive the core support they need in order to achieve subject-area fluency.
Our teachers take the time to understand their students' learning profiles; they are fully trained in the accommodations, tools, and strategies that will ensure success. They are backed by our full-time Reading and Learning Specialists, who are there to help navigate the various needs within each class, offering targeted support where needed, including appropriate use of accommodations and executive functioning support.
Above all, we are a team, working to deliver robust, wraparound support to every student, every day. We pride ourselves on being proactive in addressing challenges both inside and outside of the classroom thanks to a strong communication loop between teachers, staff, students, and parents.
Lower School Course Overview
English Language Arts
The goal of English Language Arts instruction at Sterne is to help students become clear and effective communicators, curious and critical consumers of information, and to develop the skills necessary to navigate a world of complex ideas. Students encounter grade-level content and engage in challenging projects to develop skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. We organize the school year into three thematic units in ELA:
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Self Discovery
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Celebrate Diversity
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Be the Change
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Coming of Age
Within these themes, students study contemporary fiction, classic literature, and non-fiction. They engage in short-term writing assignments on a weekly basis and quarterly long-term writing projects including a personal narrative, creative writing, a persuasive essay, and a capstone project that outlines a plan for making a change in the world.
Thoughtful and deliberate grouping enables us to support students at their instructional level whether they come to us as strong readers and writers, struggling readers or writers, or dyslexic students. In addition to our core English Language Arts program, we offer courses dedicated to targeted intervention.
Targeted Intervention
All students come to us with a unique learning profile. When a student's learning profile includes lagging skills in certain areas, they need to encounter intervention targeted directly to those lagging skills within a grade-level ELA program. We offer two tiers of targeted intervention across all grade levels: Structured Literacy and Sterne READS, our intensive dyslexia intervention program. Learn more about these programs by expanding the menus below:
Structured Literacy
These classes benefit students who have made significant progress in decoding and fluency but still need syllable practice, morphology study, and direct systematic instruction. Structured Literacy classes are scaffolded and include direct instruction of word recognition, comprehension, and spelling strategies. These classes read grade-level novels and participate in weekly spelling, writing, and vocabulary lessons that support the text and themes of that quarter.
Sterne READS: Our Dyslexia Intervention Program
Sterne READS (Reading Education And Dyslexia Support) is our signature intensive dyslexia intervention program. Sterne READS is not a pull-out program, but rather, a comprehensive intervention program embedded in our English Language Arts courses.
Our unique intervention model, based on the Orton-Gillingham approach, integrates dyslexia support within English Language Arts classes. Students participate in shared learning experiences like novels, workshops, and writing projects with their peers. Our inclusive design provides individualized support while keeping students connected to their classmates, teachers, and grade-level curriculum.
For a more-detailed overview of the Sterne READS program, go to the Learning Support page of this section.
Structured Writing
We understand writing as a means for students to demonstrate understanding, express themselves creatively, and impact an audience. Sterne writing instruction happens in a systematic and structured way, following the Jane Schaeffer program. The premise of this program is that organized writing reflects organized thinking. This method and the language used to teach it happen across all grade levels at Sterne and are understood across content areas. So when a science teacher asks a student to show what they know in writing, students have a plan to do so.
Mathematics
Mathematics offers a way of understanding the world that underlies much of the academic journey students are on. Every math class at Sterne follows a scope and sequence defined by California state standards for each grade level. Students engage in routines, in-class activities, homework, and projects in order to develop skills in number sense and algebraic thinking, geometry, measurement, and data. Our core curriculum follows Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Into Math; previously learned skills are reviewed regularly through a program called Simple Solutions; and supplemental, individualized enrichment comes through ST Math (i.e. Spatio-Temporal Math) and IXL.
In addition to the content unique to each class, we promote the following standards of mathematical practice:
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Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
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Reason and model with mathematics
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Apply math concepts to real life
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Use appropriate tools strategically
Thoughtful and deliberate class placement enables all students to encounter instruction appropriate to their level. Some students join classes above their grade level (qualifying 8th graders can take Algebra 1 in a High School class at Sterne); students with lagging skills in math are placed in groups where intervention and foundational skill development is the focus.
Targeted Intervention
Intervention for students with lagging math skills requires special consideration. Often students are stuck at the level of foundational, rote skills, such as math facts automaticity, or they struggle with procedural memory for solving math problems. Our teachers consider when it is appropriate to target these areas with additional instruction and practice, or enable students to bypass them using tools such as calculators, flowcharts, or models, so that students can engage with higher-order mathematics.
History & Social Sciences
History and Social Sciences provides students with the opportunity to understand the world through a historical perspective, attending to a historical period according to their grade level. Regardless of the time period they study, students consider people, places, and events with a critical eye, mindful of how history was experienced by different groups of people. Students develop an understanding of social justice and systemic structures of oppression throughout history. They apply this understanding to contemporary issues including current events and the ongoing struggle of marginalized communities. Students gain an understanding of their place in the world and develop an understanding of their capacity to make change.
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All 4th Graders study California History and Geography
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5th and 6th graders study early United States History and Geography: Making a New Nation and World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
Sciences
Earth and Life Sciences give Sterne students the opportunity to experience the physical and natural world through a variety of lenses. These courses are designed to provide students with an understanding of key concepts and terminology within multiple fields of science through research, critical thinking activities, investigations, lab activities, and collaborative projects. Within these courses students will learn about the study of ecology, their role in the environment, how organisms work with each other to survive, human and animal anatomy and adaptations, Earth's structures, water and the atmosphere, climate justice and change, and more. They will contribute to Citizen Science projects and learn to "think like a scientist" to share collected data with scientific organizations. Nearpod, Newsela, Brainpop, Flocabulary, and other useful programs will contribute to student engagement and understanding of content, along with lab and practical activities. Utilizing the Activity-Before-Content and Content-Before-Vocabulary methods, these courses provide meaningful and hands-on scientific learning experiences from 4th–8th grade, with a strong foundation of scientific vocabulary, inquiry, and genuine interest.
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4th and 5th graders study Earth Science: Earth's Structure and Earth's Surface
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6th graders study Life Science: Human Body Systems
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7th graders study Earth Science: Water and the Atmosphere
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8th graders study Life Science: Ecology and the Environment in collaboration with the Ocean Ambassadors Program of the Marine Wildlife Center in Sausalito
The Arts
The Arts program at Sterne is a monument to our core value, Start with Strengths. All students have the opportunity to engage in Music, Film, Drama, and Studio Art. Fourth and fifth graders participate in each one on a quarterly rotation. Older students may specialize in specific areas, taking a course for a semester, a whole year, or over the course of many school years. Each of these programs has a dedicated space: our Black Box Theater, Music Room, and Film Studio opened (along with our gymnasium) in the newly-renovated lower level in the Spring of 2023. Within each discipline, we work with students at all levels: from students who wish to explore a certain art form but have not had much exposure to students who already have advanced skills.