Creative expression
Visual and Performing Arts
The Windward Visual and Performing Arts Program provides instruction in the disciplines of music, studio art, and drama. Music is taught in the lower schools through a structured program that incorporates and integrates other subject areas, including math and social studies. Studio art is taught in all divisions and includes historical and cultural contexts. Art lessons provide opportunities for interdisciplinary connections, as well as helping students build an appreciation for art that spans time periods, cultures, and genres. Our drama program, available in the middle schools, improves students’ language skills through a curriculum that includes reading, writing, and performing plays.
The Windward School uses the PAF Program for reading and spelling, a multisensory Orton-Gillingham-based program by Phyllis Bertin and Eileen Perlman. Reading and writing are taught with a strong emphasis on language competence, skill development, and cognitive strategy.
Play and sportsmanship
Physical Education
The Lower School’s curriculum focuses on the holistic development of the students—physically, socially, emotionally—as well as encouraging students to demonstrate sportsmanship and respect amongst their peers. The Middle School’s curriculum continues to support that development by incorporating team sports, including basketball, soccer, volleyball, pickleball, and badminton. Students in the Middle Schools learn the fundamental skills and rules of a specific sport through individual and group activities and drills over the course of approximately three or four weeks. Towards the end of each unit they partake in scrimmage play with their classmates. It is our goal that students establish values like self-advocacy, teamwork, effort, and communication as part of their physical education.
Students in grades 1–3 typically have PE five times a week, with students in grades 4 and 5 attending PE three-to-four times a week. Students in the Middle Schools usually have PE twice per week.
Finding joy in reading
Library
An important role of the library program at Windward is teaching students how to responsibly conduct research. Librarians on each campus help students develop essential research skills, learn to navigate technology, and build confidence in their ability to process and organize information. Using age-appropriate materials that include books, periodicals, references sources, and online databases, Windward’s library media specialists carefully curate selections that support students’ proficiency in reading, writing, and study skills throughout the duration of their enrollment at the School.
A Powerful Toolkit
Study Skills
The Windward Study Skills curriculum is a signature program of The Windward School and is designed to prepare students for the transition to mainstream schools. This curriculum, which begins in the lower school, culminates in the preparation of four formal research papers in a specific class required for all eighth and ninth graders. This class encompasses the skills and content of language arts, social studies, and library coursework, allowing students to build knowledge about reliable research sources, close reading, note-taking, summarizing, and outlining.
Study Skills classes are structured so that students move from direct instruction to varying levels of independent work. By gaining independence in navigating the challenging process of preparing a formal research paper, students gain a sense of accomplishment, learn self-advocacy skills, and build self-confidence. In addition, students are taught the time management and organizational skills necessary to develop effective research, note taking, and writing techniques.
Nurturing Bodies and Minds