Kindergarten
We pay much attention to developing senses: hearing, touch, smell, eyesight and an ability to control the body. We consider natural and social environment the best for practicing these abilities. This means that children “live deeply” different events, sport activities, changing seasons, holidays etc. They take part in role games that imitate the adult life, participate in a performances, play musical instruments in amateurish bands etc.
Primary school
In four-year (or five-year) primary school children study reading, writing, counting etc. in a way and speed they require to be successful. And at the same time we focus special attention on the self-expressing of their experience, senses, interests etc in mixed-aged groups. We place high emphasis on teaching self-assessment in primary school. Kids own a special hand-written book where they describe their achievements during the year.
We also provide conditions to construct their own knowledge through active exploration and experimentation .
Free learning environments in primary school include “weekly days of free workshops”. On these days kids have an opportunity to choose from a range of about 20 workshops starting from beading to sports research. Thus from the earliest age, children make decisions about how to spend their time, gaining a sense of authority over their education.
So one day a week teachers and parents work with mixed-aged teams. Children are expected to move around freely, try new activities, find out how things work and interact with others of varied ages. They can test out theories about how computers work, what insects do, or how to treat other people. Since there are no grades or tests, they are able to learn from experience — mistakes and successful ventures alike.
Secondary School
In four-year (or five-year) secondary school we aim to provide opportunities to test yourself in different sorts of activities such as cognitive, labor, creative, organizational, sporting etc. Besides the compulsory curriculum teenagers have certain optional subjects to choose, make their own project/research work or take advantage to collaborate in the school community.
The key feature of subject and meta-subject classes is the priority of presenting different versions of an event, action, way of working etc. We don't push them to find the only one correct solution or answer. So children construct knowledge by discovering new information, comparing that information to what they already know and building new theories and ideas about their world and how it works .
High School
In high school each student has to make a personal curriculum. That means spending much time on reflexion and analysis. S tudents take primary responsibility for their learning.
There are few compulsory subjects such as math, literature, labor, physical education and history (the number of compulsory subjects varies and depends on the state standards and the aims of the course) and many optional subjects and workshops. There are also short-term courses that help students to get through required subjects without going deep.
As one of the key technique in high school we consider “the method of immersion" when one subject is studied soundly during several days. And a theme, mode of work, criteria of assessment and a way of testing is created by children and a teacher together at the very beginning. This method aims to
• introduce the culture, i.e interacting with philosophical, philological, linguistic, mathematical, artistic, scientific, physical, informational, civil and ecological outlooks
• form universal skills that can be helpful when solving problems in diverse spheres both scientific and day-to-day.