Middle School (Grades 6-8)

Throughout English 6, students will engage in literary analysis and close reading of short stories, poetry, speeches, novels, dramas, visuals, and informational texts. The course focuses on interpretation of literary works, analysis of informational texts, and the development of oral and written communication skills in standard (formal) English. Students read “between the lines” to interpret literature and go beyond the text to discover how the culture in which a work of literature was created contributes to the theme and ideas it conveys. Analysis of the structure and elements of informational texts and media helps students develop the skills needed for academic success and navigating the world. Students continue to acquire knowledge and skills in grammar, usage, mechanics, and vocabulary. Setting goals, self-monitoring progress, and reflecting on successes and challenges helps students become metacognitive learners. The course includes discussion activities that engage students in the curriculum while creating a sense of community. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will engage in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and presenting in order to explore the following essential questions: 
  • What are some of the challenges and triumphs of growing up?
  • How can people and animals relate to each other?
  • How is modern technology helpful and harmful to society?
  • Where can imagination lead?
  • What drives people to explore?
• The learner will select and read a book of their choice to consider and apply the elements of plot structure, explore ideas, and gain a deeper understanding of language that expresses ideas precisely and concisely. 
• The learner will build on their and their classmate's ideas, develop consensus, and communicate with others through the use of discussion boards and other online platforms.

Math 6 is a year long (2 semester) course that explores ratios and proportional reasoning and teaches early expressions and equations. 

Sixth grade mathematics is about: 

1. Connecting ratio and rate to whole number multiplication and division and using concepts of ratio and rate to solve problems 
2. Completing understanding of division of fractions and extending the notion of number to the system of rational numbers, which includes negative numbers 
3. Writing, interpreting, and using expressions and equations 
4. Developing understanding of statistical thinking

Sixth grade students are assessed with daily exit tickets and Mid-Mission and End-of-Mission assessments. 

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will use the formula for area to find the area of any parallelogram, triangle, and polygon.
• The learner will use nets to find surface area of polyhedra.
• The learner will express the surface area and volume of a cube in different ways given a side length. 
• The learner will use ratio language and notation to write equivalent ratios and explain why two ratios are equivalent or not equivalent. 
• The learner will use equivalent ratios to find unit prices. 
• The learner will use unit rates and percentages to solve problems. 
• The learner will divide fractions to solve problems. 
• The learner will use different methods to find the sum, difference, produce, and quotient of decimals. 
• The learner will create and solve equations that represent situations using variables. 

This year-long integrated course explores the connection between the physical, chemical and biological processes of science.  This student centered course borrows from Michigan Technological University’s Mi-Star STEM curriculum, while blending our own curriculum.  Students will be supplied with a materials kit at the beginning of the year from which they will solve numerous design challenges focusing on different challenge scenarios.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will discover how energy is transferred within and between systems in different but predictable ways.  
• The learner will model energy transfers which help make it possible to harness energy for societal needs. 
• The learner will discover that temperature is the measure of the average kinetic energy (KE) of the particles that make up an object or system through hands-on activities and online investigations. 
• The learner will be able to describe the proportional relationship between total thermal energy of a system and temperature.
• The learner will create models that can be used to easily test and refine solutions and come to an optimal solution. 
• The learner will construct an explanation about renewable and nonrenewable resources and how these differences affect the availability and distribution of the resources.
• The learner will describe differences between earth’s biomes.
• The learner will form arguments based on current events regarding the scientific response to ecosystems.

Students in this year-long course study human and physical geography or the world.  Students complete guided reading activities corresponding with course material, write free response journals in which they share their perspective, discuss concepts collaboratively with classmates through discussion boards, take weekly formative quizzes, and create analytical projects that showcase their mastery of concepts.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will use maps and other geographic tools to acquire and process information from a spatial perspective.
• The learner will use skills of geographic inquiry and analysis to answer important questions about relationships between people, their cultures, and their environments, in their communities and within the larger world context.
• The learner will describe the cultural groups and diversities among people who are rooted in particular places and in human constructs called regions. Analyze the physical and human characteristics of places and regions. 
• The learner will describe the physical processes that shape the Earth’s surface that, along with plants and animals, are the basis for both sustaining and modifying ecosystems.
• The learner will define culture and describe examples of cultural change through diffusion, including what has diffused, why and where it has spread, and positive and negative consequences of the change.
• The learner will describe examples of how humans have impacted and are continuing to impact the environment in different places as a consequence of population size, resource use, level of consumption, and technology.
• The learner will compare and contrast different ideas about the purposes of government in different nations, nation-states or governments.
• The learner will explain ways in which governments interact with one another through trade, diplomacy, treaties and agreements, humanitarian aid, economic sanctions and incentives, military force, and the threat of force.
• The learner will describe how individuals, businesses, and government make economic decisions when confronting scarcity or surpluses in the market economy.

Throughout English 7, students will engage in literary analysis and close reading of short stories, poetry, speeches, novels, dramas, visuals, and informational texts. The course focuses on interpretation of literary works, analysis of informational texts, and the development of oral and written communication skills in standard (formal) English. Students read “between the lines” to interpret literature and go beyond the text to discover how the culture in which a work of literature was created contributes to the theme and ideas it conveys. Analysis of the structure and elements of informational texts and media helps students develop the skills needed for academic success and navigating the world. Students continue to acquire knowledge and skills in grammar, usage, mechanics, and vocabulary. Setting goals, self-monitoring progress, and reflecting on successes and challenges helps students become metacognitive learners. The course includes discussion activities that engage students in the curriculum while creating a sense of community.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will engage in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and presenting in order to explore the following essential questions: 
  • What can one generation learn from another?
  • Should we make a home in space?
  • What can cause a sudden change in someone’s life?
  • What effects do people have on the environment?
  • How do we overcome obstacles?
• The learner will select and read a book of their choice to consider and apply the elements of plot structure, explore ideas, and gain a deeper understanding of language that expresses ideas precisely and concisely. 
• The learner will build on their and their classmate's ideas, develop consensus, and communicate with others through the use of discussion boards and other online platforms.

Math 7 is a year long (2 semester) course that explores ratios and proportional reasoning and teaches arithmetic of rational numbers.

7th grade mathematics is about: 

1. Developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships 
2. Developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations 
3. Solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions, and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume 
4. Drawing inferences about populations based on samples

Seventh grade students are assessed with daily exit tickets and Mid-Mission and End-of-Mission assessments.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will use tables to reason about measurements in scaled copies. 
• The learner will make, interpret, and reason about scale drawings.
• The learner will represent proportional relationships with tables, graphs, and equations. 
• The learner will use the relationships of circumference, radius, diameter, and area of a circle to find lengths and areas.
• The learner will use long division to write fractions as decimals.  
• The learner will reason about situations involving sales taxes, tips, markdowns, markups, sales commissions, interest, depreciation, and scaling a picture. 
• The learner will plot points in the plane with signed number coordinates, representing and interpreting sums and differences of coordinates. 
• The learner will solve linear inequalities in one variable and represent their solutions on the number line. 
• The learner will formulate and solve linear equations and inequalities that represent real-world situations.

This year-long integrated course explores the connection between the physical, chemical and biological processes of science. Course lessons and activities are designed to engage students as learners and help students to apply science in real-world decision-making. This student centered course borrows from Michigan Technological University’s Mi-Star STEM curriculum, while blending our own curriculum.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will investigate sound and light waves.
• The learner will experiment by increasing wave wave energy to see an increase in wave height and the number of waves.
• The learner will graph and analyze data to examine the mathematical relationship between wave energy and amplitude.
• The learner will explore characteristics of light, such as how we see color and what the colors “white” and “black” actually are.  
• The learner will use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.
• The learner will examine how light behaves when it travels from one medium to another and why a prism creates a rainbow with sunlight. 
• The learner will apply their knowledge of waves to solve light and sound problems at a local concert venue.
• The learner will explain how predation can cause a decline in a prey population. 
• The learner will investigate what organisms eat and what eats organisms to understand how both living and nonliving parts of their environment interact. 
• The learner will investigate competition, an interaction between organisms sharing a limited resource (such as food, water, and territory) where both organisms are harmed to see why competition can be harmful to individual organisms. 
• The learner will investigate multiple examples of mutualistic relationships between organisms, as well as consider interdependence between two species.
• The learner will gather weather information from eyewitness reports of a large snow, ice and rain storm that traveled across the U.S. They will use this information to draft a model of how air mass interactions create different types of precipitation.
• The learner will explore different examples of living and non-living things to develop a list of characteristics that living things possess.  
• The learner will discover the organization of organ systems within the human body, and how interaction between the systems is crucial for survival. 
• The learner will gather evidence about how our sense of taste works to identify the fundamental components of a sensing system: receptor, nerve and brain. 
• The learner will investigate inheritance of traits through different models.
• The learner will conduct a simulation to observe that traits in a population can have different effects on organisms depending on the environmental conditions present. 
• The learner will model how genetic mutations can result in new traits in a population.
• The learner will develop models of the proteins in bed bugs that can and cannot survive insecticide and explain how these traits are related to a past genetic mutation within the bed bug population.

Students in this year-long course study ancient world history from a global perspective.  Students complete guided reading activities corresponding with course material, write free response journals in which they share their perspective, discuss concepts collaboratively with classmates through discussion boards, take weekly formative quizzes, and create analytical projects that showcase their mastery of concepts.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will evaluate evidence, compare and contrast information, interpret the historical record, and develop sound historical arguments and perspectives on which informed decisions in contemporary life can be based.
• The learner will explain the basic features of and differences between hunter-gatherer societies and pastoral nomads. 
• The learner will analyze classical civilizations and empires and the emergence of major world religions and large-scale empires.
• The learner will use geographical inquiry and analysis to answer questions about relationships between peoples, cultures, and their environments, and interaction among places and cultures within the era under study.

Throughout English 8, students will engage in literary analysis and close reading of short stories, poetry, speeches, novels, and informational texts. The course focuses on interpretation of literary works, analysis of informational texts, and the development of oral and written communication skills in standard (formal) English. Students read “between the lines” to interpret literature and go beyond the text to discover how the culture in which a work of literature was created contributes to the theme and ideas it conveys. Analysis of the structure and elements of informational texts and media helps students develop the skills needed for academic success and navigating the world. Students continue to acquire knowledge and skills in grammar, usage, mechanics, and vocabulary. Setting goals, self-monitoring progress, and reflecting on successes and challenges helps students become metacognitive learners. The course includes discussion activities that engage students in the curriculum while creating a sense of community.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will identify different elements in literature (focusing on narrative tests) 
• The learner will discuss what makes a piece of literature compelling to read and practice using detail in their writing to compose a memoir of their own.
• The learner will master vocabulary from the texts they read.
• The learner will discuss changes in a character over time.
• The learner will practice the compare/contrast essay structure
• The learner will select and read a book of their choice,  reflect on their reading habits and write journals to describe their book and identify examples of figurative language
• The learner will use and identify effective  persuasive strategies in a multimedia presentation.

Math 8  is a year long (2 semester) course that explores linear equations and linear systems, functions and volume.  8th grade mathematics is about: 

1. Formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations
2. Grasping the concept of a function and using functions to describe quantitative relationships
3. Analyzing two- and three-dimensional space and figures using distance, angle, similarity, and congruence, and understanding and applying the Pythagorean Theorem

Eighth grade students are assessed with daily exit tickets and Mid-Mission and End-of-Mission assessments.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will identify and perform transformations such as: translations, reflections, and rotations, on shapes, lines, and points. 
• The learner will determine whether two shapes are congruent by considering their area and perimeter and using rigid transformations. 
• The learner will calculate angle measures using alternate interior, vertical, and supplementary angles to solve problems. 
• The learner will perform and identify dilations with and without a circular grid given a scale factor and a center of dilation.  
• The learner will understand that similar polygons have congruent corresponding angles and proportional side lengths. 
• The learner will find the slope of a line on a grid using properties of slope triangles. 
• The learner will find the rate of change of a proportional relationship given the graph, equation, table, or situation. 
• The learner will interpret the slope and vertical intercept of a graph of a real-world situation, and write equations that represent linear relationships.
• The learner will solve linear equations in one variable, including equations with the distributive property or variables on both sides of the equation.  
• The learner will write an equation with one variable to represent a situation in which two conditions are equal and interpret the solution. 
• The learner will solve a system of equations graphically or algebraically.  Understand that finding the solution to a system means finding values of the variables that make both equations true at the same time. 
• The learner will create an equation that represents a function rule, and calculate the output of a function for a given input using an equation in two variables. 
• The learner will use linear functions to model real-world situations and make predictions.  Determine the reasonableness of the mathematical model by comparing your predictions to the actual date.
• The learner will use the slope of a line fit to data in a scatter plot to say how the variables are connected in real-world situations. 
• The learner will generalize the exponent rules and write equivalent exponential expressions of multiplication expressions with a base of 10.

This one year course explores the origins and the connections between the physical, chemical, and biological processes of the earth system. Students experience the content through readings, journals, discussions and labs. Students will begin the first semester with an overview of the systems of Earth and the interactions among these systems. Further study will review the biochemical cycles and the dynamic Earth processes of the Earth—including the rock cycle and plate tectonics.  The second semester begins with students learning about the effects of the moving plates through the occurrence of volcanoes and earthquakes.  The next unit provides an overview of geologic time and the history of the Earth. Then students will study the importance of the oceans in the Earth system and their influence on the climate of the Earth. After a climate study, students will research severe weather systems of Earth and their effect on humans. The course ends with a unit on the structure and composition of the solar system, including a study of the stars and galaxies that exist far beyond the atmosphere of Earth.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• The learner will research and explain Earth’s unique systems.
• The learner will understand the complex interactions that occur among and within Earth’s systems.
• The learner will describe the properties of rocks and minerals, their development as a result of Earth’s interior.
• The learner will describe and discuss the theory of plate tectonics and its impact on the Earth’s landscape, and the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanoes.
• The learner will understand the historical development of Earth and the dating principles used.
• The learner will understand how oceans and the atmosphere influence the weather and climate on Earth.
• The learner will describe the evidence that supports the increasing temperature of the Earth.
• The learner will describe how severe weather systems impact human life.
• The learner will describe the origin, structure, and composition of our solar system, stars, and galaxies.

History 8 will be a comprehensive analysis of American History from the colonial period through the formation of the Constitution. Students will evaluate push/pull factors that encouraged emigration from Europe and the struggles that settlers faced as the colonies were formed and grew, along with the discontent that caused the American Revolution, resulting in the establishment of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederation and eventual Constitution. Students will also complete a book unit involving a fiction or nonfiction historical book in which they will analyze cause/effect relationships portrayed in the book and relate those to historical context.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

• What challenges and rewards did the colonists have because of their decision to leave their home country?
• Why did different colonial regions develop?
• How did regions impact life in the emerging nation?
• How did a small group of revolutionaries persuade a large group of colonists to give up their British citizenship for an unknown future?
• How did different groups come together to overcome the most powerful nation in the world, at the time?
• Why did the Articles of Confederation not work for the US?
• How did conflict that the US faced lead to a new government?
• Did compromise help or hurt the development of our government at the Constitutional Convention?
• How did different beliefs become a government?
• How is the Constitution set up?
• Why did the Constitution need to have amendments?
• What details did President Washington and the first Congress need to work out for our government to function?
• How did challenges build a model for future governments?
• How does a new nation find its place in the world?
• Identify important historical vocabulary.
• Analyze cause/effect relationships portrayed in the book, and make connections to other periods or events in history.
• Research historical questions that arise as they read.
• How does geography shape the social, political and economic values of those in the West?
• How was manifest destiny justified?
• What is the price of westward expansion?
• How did the geography and climate of the North determine its industrial economy?
• How did the arrival of immigrants and changes in the labor force affect the social and political landscape of the nation?
• How did geography contribute to the transportation revolution?
• How did changes in politics affect the economy of the Northeast and South?
• How did religious and democratic ideals influence antebellum reform movements?
• In what ways did the various reform movements reflect economic and social concerns?
• How did the abolitionist movement contribute to growing sectionalism in the United States?
• How did the lifestyles of those living in the North and the South add to the division of the country?
• What are the competing opinions in the government?
• How did compromises lead to more tension?
• How did enslaved people react to the treatment against them?
• Why did sharing political power create challenges for the nation?
• How did the early war years reveal the reality of war?
• How did the war impact society?
• Why was the North able to win the Civil War?
• Why did Reconstruction begin?
• What were the different positions concerning Reconstruction?
• How were African Americans affected by Reconstruction?
• Why was there resistance to Restoration?
• Why did Reconstruction end?
• Why did Radical Reconstruction begin?
• How did the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments work together?
• Why was there resistance to Radical Reconstruction?
• Why did Radical Reconstruction end?