Grades 5-8: Middle School
What Do We Offer Students in Grades 5 - 8?
A strong sense of self in a unique island environment
- Friends of all ages and backgrounds in a close-knit community
- Adults who know them well and appreciate their strengths and growing edges
- Frequent mentoring and leadership opportunities
- Encouragement to develop own interests
- Quaker values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship
- Generous amounts of time to explore the natural environment
Rigorous and relevant academics
- Language Arts often connecting with science and social studies; strong and continuous emphasis on writing; critical thinking; discussion and interpretation of a wide variety of literature, including novels, poetry, and Junior Great Books; informational reading and note taking; integrated use of technology.
- Science learning through hands-on inquiry and stewardship. 5th grade - 6th grade, Year One: Structures and inventions, life cycles and evolutionary change, and independent science investigation. Year Two: Earth cycles; soils, decompositions and nutrient cycles; independent science investigation. 7th - 8th grade, Year One: Physics I - light, heat, sound, magnetism, and electricity; inorganic chemistry - combustion, acids and bases, metals; human body - circulation, respiration, digestion, health; Casco Bay and Mackworth Island environment revisited. Year Two: Physics II - electromagnetism, motors, color theory, prisms and lenses; organic chemistry - carbohydrates, fats, oils, proteins; hydrocarbons, synthetic compounds, human body - nerves, muscles, skeleton, reproduction.
- Social Studies Inquiries include using Mackworth Island topography, local resources, and the lens of Quaker values as means of understanding the geography, origins and growth of civilizations remote in place and time. 5th - 6th grade, Year One: Origins of Civilizations I: Prehistory, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Year Two: Origins of Civilizations II: China, India, and Islamic civilizations. 7th - 8th grade, Year One: The 1400 - 1600's: Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Discovery. Year Two: The 1700's - Present: Major world events and US history.
- Mathematics that balances mastery of basic concepts, knowledge, operations with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, percents, ratios, solid geometry and measurement, data, statistics and probability, and algebraic thinking. Focus on applications in cooperative and creative problem-solving.
- Foreign Language: American Sign Language and Spanish.
- Art instruction building skills of creative exploration of materials and techniques; opening to the larger art community and the art world through awareness of the visual arts in relation to history, cultures and communication and environment.
- Music classes and offerings connecting the music literacy developed in the early grades to a blossoming concept of personal style. Small group work to find their own unique voice through ear training, composition and improvisation connecting songs they are naturally drawn to with established worldwide repertoire.
- Physical Education and Health promoting the knowledge and habits for healthy lifestyle choices; outdoor running and fitness, sportsmanship, ball skills, game strategy and teamwork, unicycles.
