Primary Program (1st-5th Grades)

The core of the primary program is the idea that children are individuals with varied talents, interests, abilities, and needs, and an education program needs to evolve and reshape itself to meet and support those differences while encouraging a sense of belonging. By creating a learning community of mixed ages and abilities, Clark Fork School hopes to nurture the concept of cooperative learning in the best sense: that we know more together than individually; that everyone has something to contribute; and that everyone is strengthened and supported when we share our knowledge, talents, and encouragement with one another.

Education is not a fixed collection of data to be memorized, but a process to be explored and nurtured. Our goal is to cultivate an insatiable desire to learn about the world around us, to equip our students with tools they need to find out what they need to know when they need to know it, and to develop the ability to communicate that knowledge with others.

The primary program includes the following unique components:

     ·Multi-age setting where everyone has something to teach and something to learn;

     ·Mosaic of independent and cooperative small group opportunities;

     ·Continuous progress through core curriculum (such as math and language arts) at
      the child's pace;

     ·Collaborative thematic studies integrated throughout the curriculum where possible,
      and focusing on students' sense of place in both the social and natural
      environments;

     ·Variety of instructional activities including hands-on explorations, oral expression,
      and written seat-work; and

     ·Multiple opportunities to express what is being learned, explored, or felt through
      art, music, storytelling, and drama.