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Lower School

Lower School Principal’s Welcome

What an exciting experience to learn and grow in a Christian environment at Lee-Scott Academy! At LSA, our goal is to help every child reach his or her full potential in every possible setting, while incorporating biblical, Christ-centered principles. We are dedicated to children’s growth in academics, character development, social interactions, while emphasizing Christian values that are modeled by our faculty and staff. We truly consider it a privilege to prepare students for college, life and eternity. We strive to differentiate instruction for each child with a rigorous curriculum, a variety of instructional settings and countless opportunities to build on strengths and improve weaknesses.  

As a parent, you are your child’s first teacher and we welcome you as partners.  There will be many opportunities for you to be involved in the school setting.  We look forward to finding ways for you to be a part in your child’s education and our school’s collective success.

We strive daily to incorporate our school’s mission statement and provide the following:

  • Immersing our students in biblical principles through daily devotions, Bible classes, chapel and themes to enhance their understanding of the Bible and application of these principles
  • Encouraging opportunities for students to interact and learn social skills, while modeling character
  • Offering an atmosphere where students can learn and teachers can teach without interference
  • Offering teacher-sponsored, after school clubs at varying ages to help children find their interest and talents 
  • Providing our faculty with quality professional development that enhances our rigorous curriculum, provides best practices instructionally and uses data for prescriptive and diagnostic teaching/learning 
  • Communicating with parents regularly in a variety of ways
  • Participating in enrichment classes: Spanish, STEM, technology, art and music
  • Working within a flexible media schedule to best meet the needs of students and integrate media, practice executive function and research skills, while encouraging a love for reading
  • Provide daily PE, recess and athletic opportunities to encourage health, fitness, play and a being part of a team that promotes good sportsmanship
  • Showing the joy of performing arts by integrating plays, song/dance during the year

Dr. Mary Anna Martin-Smith

Lower School Principal

K4 and Kindergarten

We are proud to offer our early childhood students with an atmosphere that encourages their overall development, while focusing on the foundations for school success. At Lee-Scott Academy, our goals are carefully geared to meet the developmental stages of each child while promoting biblical principles.

K4 Program

The K4 program uses familiar teaching vehicles to introduce language skills and number awareness. The thematic approach focuses on our belief that four-year-olds thrive in an atmosphere that stresses “fun with a purpose” while promoting the pure joy of learning and curiosity of the world around them.

Kindergarten Program

Our Kindergarten program provides experiences designed to promote academic growth, enhance thinking skills, build self-confidence, and encourage independence. Attention is given to the development of each student’s needs, modeling positive interactions with peers and learning to exhibit proper conduct in varying situations while incorporating biblical references. Daily devotions, songs to remember character traits and thematic learning create connections that are encouraged during the day in application.

1st - 6th Grade

At Lee-Scott Academy, we are committed to each child and the pursuit of reaching his or her full potential. Our integration of biblical principles, promoting good character and demonstrating daily what a positive environment should be teaches the application of appropriate interactions in all settings. We believe that we are partners with parents in preparing students for college, life, and eternity.

Our expectations go beyond the classroom setting of rigorous, college preparatory academics. We want students to experience an understanding of their individual gifts and learn to utilize those talents in a positive, productive manner in their home, church, classroom, school, and community. As a result, we incorporate enrichment opportunities of music, STEM, art, technology and Spanish instruction. Students have daily PE, recess, and opportunities for age-appropriate sports’ teams to practice working together and good sportsmanship, while promoting fitness and health.

Enrichment Courses

Lee-Scott Academy’s lower school enrichment program is designed to provide our students with the opportunity to participate in additional programs that will challenge our students through mentally or physically engaging activities throughout the academic day.

Art

Our art teacher uses Disciplined Based Art Education that promotes education across four disciplines within the arts: aesthetics, art criticism, art history and art production. It does retain a strong tie to studio instruction with an emphasis on technique. Among the objectives of DBAE are to make arts education more parallel to other academic disciplines, and to create a standardized framework for evaluation.

In the PK-6th grade art room, the focus is to create, appreciate, and enjoy art by exploring various artistic styles and historical periods of art following the Alabama Course of Study for Visual Arts. We begin art making with foundational skills based on developmental stages and move into creating more complex masterpieces inspired by famous artists and themes. We look at works of art and discuss them by describing, analyzing, and interpreting what they see. We use various media including several types of paints, oil pastels, markers, colored pencils, collage papers, printmaking, and clay to help enable them to create their own works of art. We celebrate the artistic pursuits of each student by displaying student art at the LSA Art Show in the spring. The end of the school year culminates with the creation of a student art portfolio as well as a digital art portfolio on Artsonia.com.

Music

Students at LSA have a wide range of musical experiences in their weekly class!  The music curriculum is a creative and active learning experience in which all PreK-6th grade students participate. To reach the whole musical learner, while also meeting the standards, music classes will incorporate a wide variety of teaching techniques that encourage student interest and participation.   Children in the music classes will experience a progression of learning music that centers around learning instruments and an active understanding and use at different levels of rhythm, melody, harmony, Form, Timbre, and creativity.

Students will play games associated with learning music, experiment with a variety of instruments, practice for school-wide performances and show their talents through specific organizations and clubs.  Students in the intermediate grades learn to play the recorder, as well as gain experiences with guitar, keyboards and technology integration.  Additionally, we have a LSA Lower School Choir that is sponsored by our music teacher, featuring performances at special events. Beginning in 6th grade, students can participate in the beginning band in preparation for more in-depth musical expression.  

Library Media Center

The mission of the Anne Alsobrook Library Media Center is a collaborative space that is the hub of our school, Pre-K through 12th grade.  It is open from 7:30 am – 3:30 pm each school day and has approximately 17,000 books and resources for students and faculty.  The media center’s recent renovations have offered a coffee bar, collaborative area with new furniture, and smart board for student studies/collaboration, study counter, cozy and unique reading nooks, as well as new speakers for whole group instruction and presentations. 

One of the primary goals is to provide access to resources to meet the curriculum and pleasure reading needs of our students and faculty, to help our students and staff become more effective and lifelong users of ideas and information, and to plan with and assist our teachers in strengthening the teaching/learning process.  Open access to a quality school library program is essential for students to develop the vital skills necessary to analyze, evaluate, interpret, and communicate information and ideas in a variety of formats. Because of this belief our library media center operates with a modified flexible schedule: All Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st Grade classes come to the Media Center each Friday for circulation and story time. Monday through Thursday, the Media Center is open for students and teachers to use for circulation, research, and projects. 

Students, classroom teachers, and the Media Center Specialist become partners in the learning process with a flexible library schedule. This schedule fosters collaboration between the Media Center Specialist and teachers allowing for optimum integration of resources. Collaboration with classroom teachers to design, implement and evaluate inquiry lessons encourages a high level learning experiences for students and is the catalyst that makes the integrated library program work. During the lesson planning the classroom teacher brings the knowledge of subject content and the student needs. The Media Center Specialist contributes a broad knowledge of resources and technology, an understanding of modern teaching methods, and a wide range of strategies that may be employed to help students learn inquiry skills. Together they are able to provide differentiated and adaptable experiences for students of all abilities and interests to meet the requirements of the curriculum.

Spanish

LSA Lower School students will explore the Spanish language by learning songs, plays, poetry, dialogues, and culture. Students will be immersed weekly in the Spanish language and asked to complete tasks based on their grade level skills and development. Get ready to hear your child talk about Spanish Christmas carols, Cuban poetry, the Mexican Hat Dance and much more this year in Spanish class!

STEM

STEM incorporates the academic disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. In Lower School STEM classes, students work collaboratively in teams to solve Design Challenges and develop Engineering Skills. Perfect as an academic enrichment course, STEM allows students the opportunity to stretch their critical thinking abilities and problem-solving skills as they construct and test physical prototypes in a stress-free and supportive environment.  Communication skills are nurtured throughout the cooperative process. What a fun and practical way to reinforce classroom learning, increase collaboration and enhance productivity through learning together!  We also sponsor a Lower School Engineering Night that features rotations with STEM challenges that parents and students participate in with teacher facilitation.  Break out sessions might include demonstrations by Auburn University or Lee-Scott Robotics Team students and creating answers to challenges associated with distance or mobility.  Engineering Night happens one time per year and often hosts over 150 students/parents!  It has been an important way to connect with community stakeholders, engage students in a variety of engineering challenges that they can apply later, generate interest in STEM and finally, provide a great night out for families to connect and be involved at school!

Technology

Our Pre-K through 6th grade students are 1:1 iPads that students use for instructional enhancement and can utilize these in the regular classroom, as well as technology classes.  Additionally, students attend weekly classes with a focus on equipping students with the tools and skills they need to succeed in today’s ever-changing digital world. Instruction follows both the Alabama Course of Study for Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards. Students are instructed in using the most current working applications such as the G Suite for Education (Google Drive, Docs, Gmail, Sites and Slides), the Apple Suite apps (Pages, iMovie, Clips and Keynote), Adobe Suite for Education apps (Spark Post, Spark Video and Spark Page), as well as various other applications for writing and publishing books, creating digital posters, creating QR codes to link to their work and even beginning coding. Technology is meant to be an extension of the regular classroom. It is where “application” is taken to previously unimaginable levels. In this class students apply what they learn in the subject area classroom and then share that synthesized information through project creation and presentation. Our goal is to have students to think “outside the walls of the classroom” and stretch themselves to question more, investigate more, collaborate more, and achieve more. Technology at LSA is where the students move from consumers of book content to creators of quality, visual, digital content that they can share with their peers, their teachers, their school and, perhaps one day, foster as a career!

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