The Lourdes Academy Elementary Department (grades 1 through 4) focuses on expanding the concepts and skills students learned in Early Childhood while consistently improving self-esteem.  Our students learn how to learn and how to live a Christian lifestyle.

The primary goal of our Elementary Religion curriculum is to have children learn, understand, and relate our Catholic faith to their own lives.   This is linked into all other lessons, regardless of subject matter.  Children grow in awareness and understanding of Jesus’ mission, teaching, death, and resurrection.  They also become more active members in the celebration of the Mass. 

Language Arts at this level consists of the broad subject areas of reading, writing (including spelling, grammar, usage, and penmanship), listening, and speaking.  Our goal is to give children tools to communicate and effectively interpret the spoken and written word.  Teachers provide children with many opportunities to develop and strengthen the love of language, to use language creatively, and to develop their capacity to reason.  Students in the Elementary grades engage in a writing process that extends throughout the curriculum.  Writing across the curriculum is achieved by creative writing, which is not limited to a specific subject, learning to spell reading words that are used in different types of writing, and writing summaries in areas such as Social Studies, Reading and Religion.

Elementary students participate in our Accelerated Reader Program (grades 3-4) in order to enhance their reading comprehension abilities.  At the completion of each book read, students are able to test their knowledge by taking an automated test either in their classroom or in our Media Center. The Accelerated Reader Program tracks the books each student has read, the level of the book, and the overall score and points received.  This assists the teacher in tracking each child’s reading level and if necessary, in implementing additional interventions. Each child’s Accelerated Reader result is shared with parents at appropriate intervals. 

The Elementary Mathematics curriculum uses a wide variety of activities to develop computational and problem solving skills.  Lessons cover number sense and operation, pre-algebra, geometry and spatial sense, measurement, data analysis, and probability.  The curriculum is supplemented by Sadlier Oxford’s New Progress in Mathematics which spirals instruction by introducing new concepts based on prior knowledge at each stage of learning.  Students also participate in Accelerated Math, which helps to differentiate practice in essential skills.

Math lessons are often linked to Science and Social Studies.  This integrated approach enables students to develop knowledge and apply skills in more than one area of study.  As children undertake Science activities, for instance, they develop critical thinking and reasoning skills which they can apply to other subjects.