Primary School

Welcome to ANS Primary School,

I’m Ms.Fina Ramírez, Principal of the ANS Primary School. This is my 9th year working as a member of the ANS Community. I worked as an Assistant Principal for the past three years and now I have a new role: Principal of the Primary School. I am excited and looking forward to face this new challenge, with the support of Ms. Albuquerque, who will continue working as an Assistant Principal.

We are fortunate to have great team leaders in our staff. We have a Support Service Team that consists of two Learning Support Teachers and two Counselors. We also have a Grade Level Team comprised by one teacher per each grade level. We are a school that works collaboratively as a team, making most decisions together. We work everyday to offer our students a high quality education and create a safe environment. Additionally, we have an excellent team of teachers, assistants and office staff that comes every day to our school dedicating their best to service our students. As educators, we agree with Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

Our Primary School ranges from PK3 to fifth grade. Preschool is a subdivision that serves our youngest learners, three and four year old children. This program is critical for us because early learning development is the most crucial phase in the life of a human being. This year we are implementing a new curriculum, Creative Curriculum, which will facilitate our students’ learning through a project based experience as well as practicing skills for their comprehensive development. Also, through play they will develop all the readiness skills to be prepared for Kindergarten. At ANS’ preschool, we do not teach English as a subject, it is the language through which children learn, play and therefore acquire it naturally.

From Kinder to Fifth grade, all Primary School programs are fully in English. Students from grades K-5 receive one period a day of Spanish language. All grade levels work in centers, a strategy that helps the teacher connect with the students and follow up the individual progress of each of them. In Primary School, we believe that the student is the center of his/her own learning process. Teachers are the guides that provide the scenarios to engage students to help them access and learn new concepts and make new discoveries. Among the different programs that we offer, we want to highlight the Balanced Literacy Approach for Language Arts, which respects the literacy process of each student. This year we have just acquired the BAS (Benchmark Assessment System), a new assessment tool to determine each child’s reading level, which will be used to better evaluate and support our students. In math, we will continue to use the Engage NY program, incorporating abstract concepts of mathematics related to real life.

Furthermore, we believe that an appropriate social-emotional development is the key to be able to access learning. For this reason, we work with Second Step, a program that helps our students internalize universal values, deal with feelings and develop social skills among others.

Primary school is a big multicultural community, where the students, their families and the staff, maintain a close relationship. We are sure that by being partners in the education of your children, we will successfully manage to build kind human beings, strong academic students and future leaders for Nicaragua and the world.

Kind Regards,

Fina Ramírez Hazas

Primary School Principal