Lower School
Welcome to SF Day's Lower School!
In SF Day's Lower School, our focus as educators is on urging children to embrace challenge and allow for the productive struggle. We take care to understand the whole child, and honor each child's learning style. Our signature Teaching Fellows program, in which young teachers are trained by our experienced faculty, allows for two instructors in each classroom. In this carefully considered environment, children are encouraged to be themselves at SF Day, and the diversity of our identities and experiences serve to strengthen our sense of community.
Inside and outside of the classroom, our Lower School is filled with joy. Our diverse and welcoming community celebrates others' successes and takes care to listen to the needs of others. This positive energy creates a collaborative learning environment that provides a safe space for children to learn and take risks, consistent with our Phin Foundational Values of Curiosity, Compassion, Character, and Courage.
The SF Day Learning Guide
School Life Guide
Curriculum Overview
Innovation & Technology Guide
Why Coed?
The world is coeducational.
We think childhood should be, too.
At SF Day, students learn alongside one another every day — solving problems, exchanging ideas, creating, playing, and leading together. They learn from classmates who think differently. They form friendships they might not expect. They learn to listen to a variety of perspectives. And they see every day that curiosity, creativity, leadership, kindness, and courage belong to everyone.
Coeducation is one of SF Day’s founding commitments; we were the first K-8 coeducational independent school in San Francisco. More than four decades later, we still believe there is tremendous value in a co-educational program where all children grow up and learn together. School is, after all, where children begin to practice being in the world
Listen to our SF Day podcast featuring Head of School Dr. Racheal Adriko!
Lower School Signature Programs
Outdoor Education
Our signature Outdoor Education program began in 1985 and remains an integral part of the SF Day educational experience. It begins with overnight stays in 3rd grade, and ends with two 8th grade trips, one in the fall and one in the spring. Outdoor Education provides SF Day students with the quintessential risk-taking opportunity, and gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in different ways. An emphasis is placed on group dynamics while students actively build their knowledge of ecology, geology, history, and environmental issues. We teach our students to develop their own ideas about responsible use of the outdoors and how we can help protect our planet's vital resources.
SEL & Wraparound Care
Fundamental to the values of the school, our teaching and learning is based on the belief that children learn best when children feel safe socially and emotionally. Providing a toolkit for self-regulation and emotional wellness is part of the curriculum and is reinforced early and often to mirror the arc of child development. As educators, we understand that learning differences and behavioral issues are often interconnected, so we think about the whole child from heart to mind. The School’s Office of Student Support and Wellness, the first of its kind in San Francisco, ensures that teachers, specialists and counselors are aligned in vision, so that our students can be successful.
Artist of the Month Program
SF Day’s visual arts program is foundational to the school and enriches the academic experience, by helping students make connections to the real world and grounding their learning into interdisciplinary thinking. We teach our students how to see and listen actively, give form to their thoughts, and empower their confidence and belief in themselves. An SF Day signature is the Artist of the Month program, a K-8 based curriculum where lessons are planned around the artist’s creative expression, aesthetic perception and values. All grade levels study and model the artist’s techniques and learn about the artist's sensibility in a developmentally appropriate way. The Visual Arts curriculum culminates with the all-school Imagination Celebration, where all grades display artwork that reflects artwork inspired by the artists that they have studied.
Robotics & Engineering
SF Day’s robotics and engineering curriculum makes it a priority to include underrepresented voices in this field. We start early with the idea of innovation and design partnered with digital citizenship, and are intentional about screen time with regard to our youngest students. From kindergarten on, we teach computational thinking skills to our youngest learners, including sequencing, pattern recognition, and algorithmic design. We have a competitive robotics team, starting in 5th grade, that competes in the First Lego League Qualifying Tournament each fall.
Lower School by Grade
1st grade focuses on building a sense of community through students’ understanding of their responsibility as individuals, as group members, and as positive citizens within their school. They explore ways to use literacy to express themselves through author studies and reader’s theater programs. Math is considered from multiple perspectives to build problem solving and numeracy skills. A highlight of this year is the Post Office project, through which students examine how communities work both together and individually to achieve common goals.
2nd grade is the year when students begin to look beyond our campus to investigate neighborhoods, including the cultural and architectural history of San Francisco. They research transportation and simple machines, compare and contrast Victorian times with life today, and build a model of the city to scale which requires increasingly complex math skills focused on subtraction and equivalence. Students spend time deepening their decoding and encoding strategies through the study of literature.
3rd graders learn about their social impact on community, and stretch themselves in academic and social settings. They study the Bay Area’s ecosystems and how living things interact with the environment. In math, students are introduced to systems and information organization, problem-solving through real-life examples, and how to employ standard and non-standard measuring tools. Genres including personal narratives, persuasive essays, mysteries, character studies, and expert topic books help 3rd graders express themselves and ideas through a wide range of perspectives.
Across different subject areas, 4th grade students work collaboratively to explore multiple viewpoints, reflecting their growing independence. Math emphasizes thinking processes and explaining methodologies. Reading becomes more sophisticated as 4th graders develop text awareness, understanding authors’ points of view, and original opinions. Social-emotional learning focuses on healthy habits of the mind, how to share our understanding of self, and how to make impactful community contributions.
In 5th grade, students develop critical thinking skills to make informed decisions, to think for themselves, and to become independent problem-solvers. SF Day teaches the skills that help forge emotionally mature, compassionate, and empathetic students who can manage their time and prioritize tasks and goals. SF Bay ecology, number sense and operations, and data analysis anchor the science and math programs.