Principal's Message
Welcome to Mar Vista Elementary School for Advanced Studies!
Mar Vista is a model community school in which parents, community members, teachers, and school staff work together to ensure that our children have optimal learning opportunities and experiences during their formative elementary years. We believe in educating the whole child to support each child’s intellectual, social, emotional, and physical growth and development by providing learning opportunities that are child-centered, age-appropriate, engaging, differentiated, and hands-on. Our goals are to provide the highest quality curriculum and instruction, exciting arts and enrichment programs, and daily opportunities for meaning engagement for all our students.
Listed below are some of the excellent programs we offer throughout the school year taught by exceptional and highly qualified educators:
- Music and Chorus
- Visual Arts
- Science Lab
- Computer Lab
- Technology Integration
- Wonder of Reading Library
- Spanish Classes
- Enrichment PE – physical exercises, team sports, sportsmanship, and healthy living
- Spirit Series – history comes to life through theater, literature, and character building
- Growing Great – gardening and nutrition for healthy living
- Calm Classroom in partnership with UCLA Cares – support the emotional well-being of students through mind-body exercises for calm and mindfulness
- Social Emotional Learning – support the growth and development of students' self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making
- Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) Mathematics in partnership with UCLA Mathematics Project – approach to teaching and learning mathematics by building on what children already know and extending their mathematical ideas, solving problems using real-world contexts and multiple strategies, attending to student thinking, and helping students to build deeper levels of conceptual understanding which progresses to abstract representations.
- Science of Reading and Balanced Literacy – approach to teaching and learning foundational literacy skills through structured and child-centered literacy. In addition to explicit and systematic techniques and lessons, students are provided opportunities for choice, authenticity, independence, process, and time. Our goal is for our students to develop the skills and strategies necessary to be fluent and confident readers and writers who display agency and independence.
- STAR Education after school programs - STAR offers a variety of Nova classes like band, theater, dance, visual arts, sports, cooking, and so much more (fee based) as well as daily after school Galaxy childcare (fee based).
- Full-time Instructional Coach and Coordinator to support the instructional programs
We are supported by the generous donations of our parents and community members who volunteer endless hours, serve on various committees, lend their expertise and talents, and support our school in numerous ways (too many to count). This meaningful collaboration of stakeholders creates an outstanding academic and school climate, making Mar Vista the place to be!
Mar Vista is proud to partner with the following organizations that support research-based teaching and learning:
- Cahn Distinguished Principals Fellowship
- Costen Foundation for the Art of Teaching Fellowship
- Math Identity Partnership with UCLA Mathematics Project
