You never forget how to ride a bicycle, the saying goes. Stone Ridge may soon find out whether that learning is just as eternal for how to put a bike together.

This spring, Pre-Kindergarteners engaged in a season-long exploration of bicycles. The newest Lower School students discussed how people use bikes in everyday life, both in local neighborhoods and worldwide. They learned how these vehicles can be adapted to serve people with special needs. And the 4- and 5-year-olds dug into a deconstructed unicycle to examine its components and see how everything fits together.

This study came to life through Project Approach, a distinctive aspect of the Lower School curriculum that encourages students in every grade to investigate real-world topics familiar to them.

Project Approach, says Director of Educational Technology and Innovation Jaime Chao Mignano, allows Lower School students to become intimately familiar with such practices as “the design cycle, strategies for testing, for receiving and synthesizing feedback, making decisions, and the practice of a growth mindset.”

Ultimately, Ms. Chao Mignano believes that Project Approach helps Stone Ridge students see themselves as makers—people comfortable with taking something apart and rebuilding it better than before.

Head of Lower School Sandy Gillespie, who brought the Project Approach to Stone Ridge, agrees with that assessment: “Students who are engaged in more project learning are more curious. They’re more motivated,” she says. “They know how to do research. They know how to find answers to things. They understand that the world is a place where people have to work together to make things happen.”

For the Pre-K class, examining the bicycle was simply “the hook” to strengthen specific skills, says Pre-Kindergarten Teacher Kathryn Gillick ’89, “developing questioning, the ability to learn new information from different sources, the ability to observe closely.”

Mrs. Gillick and her colleague, Pre-Kindergarten Teacher, Michele Carpenter, helped their students understand bicycle technology—how an axle works and the role of a gear—to learn why each part is essential. Along the way, students discovered firsthand why going uphill is slower than downhill. And Julie Ott ’99, Lower School Educational Technologist, used Stone Ridge’s 3D printer to create gears that the children could manipulate.

Much of this curriculum comes together in summer, when faculty like Mrs. Gillick and Ms. Carpenter sit down with Mrs. Ott and Ms. Chao Mignano and brainstorm how to weave the Project Approach’s tenets into Stone Ridge’s “Expectations for Learning” standards and their grade lesson plans.

The planning goes only so far, though. Teachers then take their cue from the children in class about particular facets that interest them.

“Students who are engaged in more project learning are more curious. They’re more motivated. They know how to do research. They know how to find answers to things. They understand that the world is a place where people have to work together to make things happen.” 

–Head of Lower School Sandy Gillespie

“The girls are taking ownership of their learning,” says Lower School Teacher Maura Murphy ’15, Grade 3. “They’re leading the charge half the time.”

This dynamic is a central quality of Project Approach, which asks teachers to be highly flexible about their lessons. “We’re not teaching kids a topic,” Ms. Carpenter explains. “We’re teaching kids how to learn, to direct their own learning by following their specific curiosity.”

“In the early grades, our job is to help them to love to learn, which is foundational to their Sacred Heart education,” Mrs. Gillick adds.

Over time, the Lower School has extended Project Approach to cover all grades, from Pre-K through Grade 4. In the older grades, trips off-campus allow students to explore and absorb more information about their subject. Discoveries come back to the classroom, where students in small groups build on them through hands-on work.

Lower School Teacher Rebecca McCleary, Grade 3, says, “When you do a field trip, you just go have your field trip and it’s done. But with these field experiences we do, we start with asking, what do you want to learn while we’re there? The students come up with their own questions. And then, out in the field, they have clipboards, they’re taking notes, they are invested in the process.”

This spring, Grade 3 students focused on sustainability, which inspired a class visit to Montgomery County’s Recycling Center in Derwood. The trip fired the children’s imaginations and ambitions, and they returned to Bethesda determined to reduce the amount of food waste and trash Stone Ridge sends to the landfill.

Grade 3 students, many of whom are in their fourth year of Project Approach, collected data documenting the amount of compost and recycling the School collects compared against trash totals. They also designed maps for Mathews Dining Hall that point students to those specialized bins.

Mrs. Ott says admiringly, “They’re doing a lot of groundwork—highlighting our sustainability efforts and what we can do better, working with our Lower School team to highlight those areas, and creating some ideas for the Mater Center after lunch.”

Such work, says Ms. Murphy, exemplifies why “Project Approach is Sacred Heart to me. This is what St. Madeleine Sophie Barat wanted for students: To wonder about the world. To feel a part of a global community. And to have that social awareness, that action piece.”

“They come to know that they can ask questions, and they can find the answers. They are researchers. They have the skills that they need moving forward.” ❤