Marie Reed students in grades 3-5 receive 1 hour per week of swim instruction. The swim classes are structured following the American Red Cross’s “Learn to Swim” program. This program includes fundamental aquatic skills (safety concepts, safe water entry and exiting, buddy system checks, responding to lifeguards and instructors, floating and bobbing) and aquatic strokes (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, sidestroke, elementary backstroke, butterfly and a range of dives).  The curriculum taught is the same each week across grades, with scaffolded instruction based on the skill of the swimmer(s).

Mr. Burdick, our swim teacher been a swimmer his entire life starting with “mommy and me classes” from 2 years of age, YMCA swim team in grades K-7, JV swim team in 8-10th grade, varsity swim team in 11-12th grade, and taught college level swim classes at SUNY Brockport 2011-2013.   He joined the Marie Reed faculty in 2017.