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Middle School: Seventh Grade Curriculum
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Big Question How did we get here?
Arts An important piece of our program is viewing the world from many different perspectives. Arts courses encourage students to develop an aesthetic sense, to express themselves in new and unique ways, and to explore their own creativity. Students select courses from options that include drawing, painting, graphic design, drama, and music.
Historical Thinking 2 Students explore what makes a people unique: customs, beliefs, and relationships to surroundings and neighbors. The year begins with a unit on world geography, culminating in individual projects in which students answer how they and their families got here to the Pacific Northwest. Students examine historical change, studying democracy from ancient to modern times and how and why governments and the rule of law developed among different peoples and societies. Finally, the class focuses on revolutions in politics and thought. The course emphasizes rhetoric and persuasion studying political speeches, satire, and pamphleteering. Students read primary and secondary documents for meaning and bias, use historical methods to ask and answer questions, develop hypotheses, and defend them with evidence.
Literary Thinking 2 Students compare readings to personal experience and place them in historical contexts. Themes of justice, dignity, and cultural roots link with the Historical Thinking. Readings include Of Mice and Men, The Glory Field, The Tempest, and poetry. Students make, confirm, and revise predictions and inferences based on readings. They develop a literary vocabulary: point of view, style, character, setting, plot, tone, and theme. They practice writing letters, journals, short stories, poems, reviews and they write to inform, persuade, and create. They also work on oral presentation skills: voice projection, eye contact, posture, emphasis, and pacing. Daily work on grammar, usage, and mechanics is applied to editing and revising papers.
Mathematical Thinking 2 or 3 Students use mathematics for description, analysis, and prediction. They identify a problem, represent it in symbols, and solve for the unknown. They use writing to explain how they solve problems. Topics include numbers and operations, measurement, basics of algebra and geometry, data analysis and probability, problem solving, and reasoning and proof. Levels of instruction in mathematics are ability-based.
Physical Education Physical education encourages students to push their limits, work as a team, accept wins and losses and live a healthful life. Courses emphasize lifelong fitness and include cross country, dance, basic fitness and others.
Scientific Thinking 2 Several units help answer the question “How did we get here?” Evolution: The historical, social, and scientific background that led to the development of evolutionary theories. Cell Biology and Genetics: Cell components and processes with emphasis on social, scientific, and ethical issues such as the stem cell debate, genetically-modified food, and gene therapy. The Diversity of Life: Connections between the form of living organisms and their physiological functions as well as between the characteristics of living organisms and their abiotic habitat. The Human System and Medicine: A close examination of all of our major systems. Part of this unit is concurrently taught with history and examines the evolution of the science of medicine.
Spanish 1 or 2 All students study Spanish in grades 6-9. Students focus on grammar, vocabulary acquisition, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Goals are to increase skills over the course of the year and to lay a foundation for rapid advancement to written and spoken proficiency. We nurture a Spanish-speaking community that starts in the classroom and extends beyond it.
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