West Woods Upper Elementary School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

This school’s educational program communicated a very clear vision calling for integration of its exemplary elementary and middle school programs in harmony with the ever-changing natures of ten to twelve year olds. The concept of small learning communities - networks of students, teachers, staff, and parents — guided the sensibility of this vision. Classrooms, guidance, resource, and support rooms are grouped into eight clusters that support two and four-teacher teams, promoting a seamless transitional environment from elementary to middle school for the young people learning and growing within.
The concept of small learning communities directly affected overall layout and plan. Although the harsh New England climate made an open campus-plan unreasonable, the school’s design signature is a series of individual buildings connected by transparent connectors. This approach supports the learning program on many levels: It allows students to identify a smaller home within the larger community of the school. It mirrors the village-like character of the town itself and allowed construction along a ridge with minimal clearing of land. Students are never out of view of preserved woodland and daylight and greenery are in constant abundance.
Each cluster has a meeting space with moveable furniture, display walls, and ceiling mounted LCD projectors. Two of the four classrooms in each team have a moveable partition, facilitating large group instruction, and an island in each classroom provides areas for small group work within the classroom proper. Hallway lockers were eliminated in favor of classroom cubbies, promoting an elementary school atmosphere and increasing utility of each cluster’s common areas. A wide variety of presentation media are positioned throughout.
Architects and Building Committee members conducted extensive staff interviews, held community meetings at every school in the district, surveyed 5th graders, and visited numerous 6th grade classrooms to explore the ideas of students and end users. A lesson learned from this process was that students might not always be clear on their desires when talking to adults. The outdoor recess area was designed to support the passive nature of recess as described by the students — talking, sitting with friends and limited ballgames. During an initial post-occupancy evaluation it was apparent that this type of activity was far from the actual needs of this age group. As a result, the recess area was modified to include basketball and other active games.
Teachers were involved in the design of each space beginning with overall layout during schematic design, continuing with specific equipment during design development, and finally site visits during construction to confirm previous decisions. During these visits changes were requested and modifications made, ranging from cabinet alterations to the elimination of interior partitions. The visits ensured that staff fully understood the 3-dimensional implications of the drawings they had previously approved. As a result, opening day surprises were few, as building changes had been successfully completed throughout the planning process.

Educator Narrative

The new 5/6 upper elementary school was intended to integrate the best of our district’s current elementary and middle school programs. The educational program for the school is rooted in the belief that students in grades 5/6 need:

a transitional experience which effectively bridges the gap between elementary and middle school and accommodates the changing nature of ten to twelve year olds;

an increasingly diversified program which secures the continuous acquisition of developmental skills in preparation for middle school and exposes students to many areas of study and modes of learning; and

an educational environment comprised of small learning communities—networks of students, teachers, support staff, and parents, configured as teams in grade level clusters.

The education specifications for the new building addressed the school philosophy and program needs, and nine months into our new building, we are delighted by the fit between structure and program. At the center of our intermediate school is a rigorous core academic program, provided in a small, responsive and supportive setting. The program includes long instructional blocks in support of core academic subjects (language arts, reading, mathematics, science, social studies and world language) as well as learning opportunities in the visual arts, physical education/health, and instrumental and choral music. We are working to align and organize the curriculum thematically in order to unify the two-year experience for students and to support transitions in and out of the new school. “Learning to learn” and study skills are an integral part of each student’s academic program, as is the purposeful application of technology. Technology skills are incorporated into the core curriculum and into the Library/Media Center learning opportunities, and the latter serves as the hub of the educational program and the new school facility.

The organization and schedule of our new school support the rigorous curriculum and the developmental needs of our students. Both grades are organized into teams so that classroom teachers can provide the supportive structure of an elementary school—one teacher with 20-25 students—and work in pairs with other teachers and classes within the grade level. Each team has four classes and is supported by a variety of specialist teachers. The building was designed to support the grade level team structure and includes a cluster of five classrooms for each of eight teams with necessary resource and support spaces adjacent to each team. Each team also has, by design, a foyer or assembly space, which permits an entire team to gather for meetings, small performances, or demonstrations. These spaces were intended to create the atmosphere of a small learning community within each grade level, and the overall design serves to reduce the scale of the building to a nurturing and appropriate size for our young students.

Co-curricular, extra curricular and intramural activities are an integral part of our 5/6 program, and we have generous and carefully designed spaces within and outside the building to support these activities. Family and community involvement are viewed as an important component of our school mission, and facilities and design components within the building support this component as well.