What We Teach

Soundview School provides education for students aged three through eighth grade.

Tuition Financial Aid — Tuition
Financial Aid

Student Bill of Rights

I have the right to be treated with respect and care. I have the right to be myself.

I have the right to be safe.

I have the right to be heard.

I have the right to learn about myself.

Learn more about the students’, parents’, and our school’s rights and responsibilities in the Soundview Family Handbook HERE.

Soundview School's teaching is guided by the International Baccalaureate.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a non-profit educational organization that was founded in 1968. The IB provides a framework for education. It does not tell us what to teach. Instead, it guides how we teach. Soundview's program is always under construction. It is designed and revised based on evolving educational research, practice, and the needs of our future world. Click HERE to see an interview with the Director General of the IB, Dr. Siva Kumari.

“The International Baccalaureate Program is a genuinely intellectual curriculum. There is no other curriculum anywhere that does a superior job of both educating students and inspiring a true and broad-based love of learning.” William Swain, Vanderbilt University, Dean, Undergraduate Admissions

Our world needs knowledgeable, compassionate, and ethical citizens and leaders.

At Soundview, we work with our students and families to build a solid foundation for success. Every child is a leader, empowered to make a positive difference. The Soundview community values diversity and safety. We honor how children really learn by encouraging curiosity, risk-taking, creation, and reflection. We do all of this by implementing the International Baccalaureate framework.

The IB framework has 3 key benefits:

It’s a learning experience that is relevant to children’s current and future lives.
It’s an education built on the developmental stages of childhood, meeting students right where they are, and maximizing the way students naturally learn.
It’s a program designed to teach students how to take ownership of their own learning.

The Ten Traits of IB Learners

Soundview community members strive to be:

Caring
Open-minded
Principled
Risk-takers
Balanced

Thinkers
Inquirers
Communicators
Reflective
Knowledgeable

We introduce, practice, and coach these Ten Traits in every classroom, every day, to nurture emotional character, intellectual habits of mind, and international-mindedness. These are the Ten Traits that we seek to develop in our students and ourselves.

The Soundview IB program includes our fully authorized Middle Years Program (MYP). The MYP is designed for students in 6th through 8th grade.

Soundview School is a Candidate School for the Primary Years Program (PYP). Soundview is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that Soundview School believes is important for our students.

PYP is for students in preschool through 5th grade and consists of three multiage pods: Early Childhood, Primary, and Intermediate.

Learning Differences and Neurodiversity: The Skills Collaborative

Soundview's Skills Collaborative provides specific, individualized support to a limited number of students with well defined learning differences. These students will be those that we believe we can assist in meeting the standards of the International Baccalaureate.

"Every child deserves an education that is ethical, rigorous, and compassionate." Soundview School

As an inclusive school, we embrace diversity by creating conditions where all feel welcome, safe, empowered, supported, fairly treated, and affirmed. Because educating internationally-minded students is inherent to our mission, we seek to provide opportunities that broaden our understanding of the variety of different ways people live and experience the world.

Educators are just beginning to understand the needs of neurodiverse students, just as educators are just beginning to understand the gifts that the neurodiverse have to offer. The educational environment for the neurodiverse is changing rapidly to a strength-based perception and Soundview will be a part of that change.

For more information regarding Soundview’s support of learning opportunities for the neurodiverse, please contact Chrissy Sinclair, Soundview Assistant Head of School, or Teresa Ledford, Skills Collaborative Coordinator and Teacher.

“When I was younger I was looking for this magic meaning of life. It’s very simple now. Making the lives of others better, doing something of lasting value. That’s the meaning of life, it’s that simple.” Dr. Temple Grandin

In Soundview's Early Childhood Education Programs (EC; ages three through six), the earliest years of the a student's education are devoted to play. This is how children learn. In Soundview’s EC Prograam, students acquire key learning skills that are fundamental for future school success. These skills include their cognitive ability to reflect on their knowledge, conceptual understandings, and their own competency. A wide range of assessment strategies informs the teaching of young students.

“Children have authentic experiences with leadership, collaboration, and deep problem solving through play.” National Educational Association, 2018

From birth, children are ‘hands-on’ natural inquirers. They learn through playful interactions with people and their environment. Play is an essential aspect of a child’s healthy development. Through play-based learning, children develop and nurture fundamental knowledge and skills.

The IB knows that young learners are intelligent, resourceful, and creative individuals who grow, develop, and learn at different rates and with different learning styles. In their earliest years, children explore their environment and learn about their world through playful activity as well as through relationships with peers, teachers, family, and community members. Early learning is a holistic experience that integrates socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Read more in this excerpt from the Family Handbook.

“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” Fred Rogers, American television personality, 1928–2003

Soundview’s Primary Years Program (PYP; ages seven through ten) builds on the skills nurtured in the EC program and intruduces a curriculum framework that consists of six transdisciplinary themes. These themes become the foundation for a continuous educational experience throughout the students' IB engagement. These themes reflect a set of shared human experiences, or Core Commonalities, that are the basis of an international education.

“I don’t think there is anyone who does not respect the IB.” Panetha Ott, Brown University, Admissions Officer

Those Core Commonalities are:

Who we are
Where we are in place and time
How we express ourselves
How the world works
How we organize ourselves
Sharing the planet

Students engage in six units of inquiry that correspond to these Core Commonalities. Each unit of inquiry begins with a provocation, is developed through the students' own questions, and culminates in student-driven action in the service of our community. Units of inquiry are transdisciplinary, which means language, social studies, mathematics, arts, science, personal, social, and physical education are all integrated into the experience. Subjects that require discrete skill development, especially literacy and numeracy, are also taught and practiced as stand-alone curricula. Read more in this excerpt from the Family Handbook.

The Soundview School Middle Years Program (MYP; ages eleven through thirteen) is built on three basic truths of early adolescence.

Students need plenty of opportunities to build and nurture strong relationships with teachers and peers.
Middle School students learn skills and concepts best with a relevant, challenging interdisciplinary curriculum that allows them to make important connections between the academic disciplines and applications in their own lives and the world.
The right environment for middle school students is highly flexible with time for exploration, and is free from unnecessary disruptions and transitions.

“IB graduates move with ease in a diverse and global university that demands intercultural skill and adaptability. [They have] engaged in the kind of rigorous work that is likely to help them become not just an outstanding college student and citizen of the world, but an exceptional one.” P. Horne, Purdue University, Vice Provost for Enrollment Management

The Middle Years Program consists of ten interrelated classes:

Design Thinking
Mathematics
Science
Individuals and Societies
Language and Literature

Language Acquisition
Visual Arts
Concert Band
Physical and Health Education
Advisory

Class projects and assessments are designed to be interdisciplinary (interweaving two or more disciplines). Each unit of study is designed to develop subject-specific skills and concepts, in addition to exploring the essential and debatable questions of each discipline. The work of the subject areas becomes applicable and relevant through overarching global contexts which include identities and relationships, orientation in time and space, personal and cultural expression, scientific and technical innovation, globalization and sustainability, as well as fairness and development. Read more in this excerpt from the Family Handbook.