middle school curriculum guide

Explore our Middle School course descriptions by grade level and area of study.

Grade Level

In fifth grade Humanities, students will hone their integrated reading and writing skills as they gain a greater understanding of the role they play as readers and writers engaging with content. During the first weeks of fifth grade, students utilize poetry as a lens through which they can reflect on their personal identities and the communities they inhabit; building a meta awareness of who they are and how they engage with society. With an understanding of the who, why, and how of their now, students are ready to dive back in time to study the who, what, where, why and how of our ancient human civilizations. Students will study the culture, history, and geography of select ancient civilizations in order to understand the individuals and communities that made up these incredible societies. Further, students will build an understanding of how these civilizations continue to impact us today which will allow for an exploration of how who we are and what we do today may impact future generations.

Essential Questions of the Course

What makes a community?
What is my personal identity and how does that influence how I move through different spaces and communities?
What were the communities and identities that made up ancient civilizations?
How and why do those ancient civilizations impact our communities today?
How do we, as individuals and as a community, influence others?

Math

Curriculum Overview

Fifth graders will study topics in-depth that focus on the strands of Number, Geometry, Algebra, and Data. The goal is for students to see mathematics as a discipline full of connections among concepts and to other disciplines—not merely as a collection of isolated skills. Units are designed around a series of experiences that encourage students to explore, theorize, test ideas, revise, debate and develop meaning of mathematical concepts. They will work on their first Problems of the Week in Middle School, an opportunity to look for patterns and reflect deeply on their process and what questions they might have.

Curriculum Units

Number Sense and Operations: order of operations; multiplication and division strategies including the standard algorithms; adding and subtracting fractions; place value of whole and decimal numbers and powers of ten; fractions, decimals, and percents.
Geometry: area and perimeter of compound rectangles; hierarchy of quadrilaterals and triangles; coordinate planes; volume and surface area of rectangular prisms.
Data, Statistics, and Probability: probability; mean, median, and mode; analyzing a set of data for meaning.
Algebraic Reasoning: introducing variables; one-step equations

Science

Curriculum Overview

Fifth grade science is an introduction to Life Science, Earth Science, Physical Science, and Engineering. We have a few principles that guide our path through the curriculum:

Scientific phenomena are complex and present all around us.
Science is a collaborative process that deconstructs the complex into understandable models and metaphors. By using these models and metaphors, we can design new explanations.

The goals for the class are to show the impact of science on life and the world around us and beyond, and to apply the tools of science to areas of interest. Students do investigations in the environment, solar system, human body systems, and bridge design.

Essential Questions of the Course

What processes sustain life?
What environmental factors affect plant and animal growth?
What explains the diversity of life that we see on our planet, and what impact do humans have on it?
What are the steps one can use to deeply investigate a concept, question, or system?

Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Fifth grade Español is an immersive, proficiency-based class. The teacher's main job is to flood students with understandable, high-frequency Spanish. The students’ job is to read and listen actively and to speak, write, and gesture “enthusiastically” in response to prompts. That both helps them absorb the meaning and gives the teacher clear feedback about their understanding. Even a 40-minute live class is rigorous, both mentally and physically!

Cultural competence is an intangible but essential skill set developed in language class. The course content presents both “mirrors and windows”*: when we open windows exploring ways of life different from our own, we inevitably turn mirrors on ourselves to consider our own life and habits from a new perspective. Ultimately, building a practice of seeing others as ourselves also fosters life-long empathy towards others and consciousness around equality, equity, and social justice.

*Credit to Rudine Sims Bishop and Emily Styles

Essential Questions of the Course

How might I use the Spanish words I know to understand and be understood?
How are Spanish and English similar and different?
Which features of Spanish-speaking cultures seem different from mine and which might be universal?

Bilingual Spanish

Curriculum Overview

The class enables students to develop, maintain, and enhance proficiency in Spanish by providing them the opportunity to listen, speak, read, and write in a variety of contexts for a variety of audiences including the family, school, the immediate community, and the world community.

Students review and learn advanced grammar and at the same time explore the culture and literature of the Hispanic world, particularly Spain and South America.

Students strengthen their communicative skills with a focus on vocabulary expansion, mastery of advanced grammatical structures, and an understanding of the uses of indicative conjugation in all tenses, as well as get an introduction to the conditional, imperative, progressive, and compound tense: the present perfect.

Pronunciation and oral expression are reinforced and stimulated by reading and writing. This year the fifth and sixth grade classes will read the book: “Frida, el misterio del anillo del Pavo Real y yo” by Angela Cervantes, as well as short stories by Latin American and Spanish authors.

Students read a selection of articles on current events to hold conversations on different topics. Students explore Latin culture and share their discoveries in group interactions, as well as through writing, oral presentation, and research projects. Class activities include skits and role plays, videos, and games.

Note: Our bilingual program, having two grades together, follows an annual cycle, thus allowing students not to repeat the topics they saw the previous year. Consequently the program changes each year in terms of topics, readings and grammar.

Essential Questions of the Course

Why should I study Spanish?
How is language related to culture?
How do we use language to give information about ourselves and others?
How can I enhance my connection with people through language?

Collaborative Class

Curriculum Overview

Collaborative Class in fifth grade offers students the unique opportunity to engage with their core teachers and explore where all three subjects (Science, Math and Humanities) intersect around a theme; the theme is this year's class is water. Throughout the year, using a hands-on learning approach, fifth graders will study where the water we drink comes from; how water is used by families, communities, and industries; and what the future of access to clean water means. Additionally, collaborative class will be used as a time for students to engage in year-long fifth grade projects such as the senior Pen Pal Project, the Opet Festival, the first and the fifth grade buddy program. Throughout the year, students will develop collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.

Essential Questions of the Course

What is water made of?
Why is water essential?
How do people gain access to water?
How is water used as a resource?
Why is the acquisition of fresh water a political and social issue?
How does the presence of water affect our lives in San Francisco?

Music

Curriculum Overview

Teamwork, meaningful participation, and flexibility are guiding principles as students learn to make ensemble music together in fifth grade. The primary instrumental emphasis is on both non-pitched and pitched percussion, including everything from buckets to xylophones. Understanding how to read and write music notation, specifically rhythm, is a core learning goal for the class. Students are introduced to reading pitches in both treble and bass clefs. Students are expected to play a variety of scale patterns and will learn how to spell basic chords with mallet instruments. Additional musical concepts including song structure, listening, and creativity will be emphasized in both large and smaller group settings.

Essential Questions of the Course

What is my role in an ensemble?
What skills do I need to learn to master my instrument?
What are things that musicians regularly do to perform at their best?
What can watching and listening to other musicians teach us about our own performance?
What does it mean to make a meaningful critique on my playing as well as the group sound?
What are the ways I can contribute to an ensemble beyond just my playing?

Design

Curriculum Overview

A Makerspace benefits students by engaging, encouraging, and exploring learning at a deeper level. It’s important to for students to learn a maker mindset that includes creative thinking, solving complex problems, iterative thinking, critical thinking, perseverance, thinking divergently, and the engineering process. The fifth grade Design/Technology course is a one-quarter class that teaches students to learn how to safely and effectively use design, crafting, and building tools. Students also learn how to clean and care for the Maker Space.

Projects

Students start with a design challenge that teaches them the design process and how to use materials like hot glue guns, paint, hand tools, cutting implements, and other manipulatives to practice working and cleaning in the Maker Space. The second project introduces the bandsaw, sanding belt, and drill press to teach students important shop tool safety and protocol. Students may have a laser cut project (laser cutter operated by the instructor only) in combination with this second lesson build. The third project introduces sewing and jewelry with simple projects that teach basic crafting lessons. The fourth project introduces basic coding concepts using MicroBits. Students will combine a programming output with one of their first 3 lessons to create an interactive final project.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can I engage my creative and maker brain for projects that require both design and fabrication skills, while having fun and being safe?
In the design process, one important step is testing to see if a project works and is made well, and then improving if it needs it. How can I create something that I then test and improve upon, while gaining confidence in my maker abilities?
How can I be a good steward of the Maker Space and work safely, thoughtfully, and with regular cleaning protocols, ensuring that it is ready for incoming users when my class/elective/club is over?

Physical Education

Curriculum Overview

Our main focus is basic movement skills and games through many types of developmentally appropriate activities, in addition to personal and social development. Students are expanding their knowledge of organized play through participation, positive competition and personal control of emotions and body. Full participation in class is a main focus along with the students moving towards the ultimate goal of making independent choices about physical activity in their future years.

Essential Questions of the Course

How am I changing and growing as an athlete?
How are traditional team sports similar and different from recreational games?
Where do I need to focus to improve?
How can I Improve my participation and skill?
How can I support my team fairly?
What role do I play in my team?
How do I contribute to a positive and encouraging sports class for everyone?
What strategies can I learn and devise particular to each sport?
How do I handle winning, losing and personal disappointments and successes?

Sixth Grade

Sixth Grade Course Descriptions

Humanities

Curriculum Overview

In sixth grade Humanities, students emphasize building essential communication skills including speaking, writing, and presenting, as well as key reading and research skills. Students begin the year exploring the structure of language through the works of T.S. Eliot, and explore their own identities through narrative and reflective writing. As the year progresses, they practice structuring an argument, incorporating evidence, and finding reliable sources for their research. Students will practice close-reading techniques with nonfiction memoir, and connect their learning to present-day news articles. Finally, students study the Civil Rights Movement and research civil rights leaders of their choice.

Throughout the year, students practice reading and analyzing texts with weekly short reading assignments; build comfort with writing and reflection through daily journaling; develop public speaking skills in extemporaneous debates and prepared discussions; and refine language skills with grammar and punctuation practice assignments.

Essential Questions of the Course

How does who you are shape the way you see the world?
How can you share your opinion with others, and use empathy to connect your ideas to your audience?
How do people build relationships and communities to change their world?
How can we infer people’s unspoken thoughts, feelings, and ideas from their words?

Math

Curriculum Organization

Sixth graders will study topics in-depth that focus on the strands of Number, Geometry, Algebra, and Data. The goal is for students to see mathematics as a discipline full of connections among concepts and to other disciplines—not merely as a collection of isolated skills. Units are designed around a series of experiences that encourage students to explore, theorize, test ideas, revise, debate and develop meaning of mathematical concepts.

Curriculum Units

Number Sense and Operations: integer operations; factors and multiples; decimal operations; fraction operations.
Geometry: area and perimeter of circles; area of polygons; angles and symmetry.
Data, Statistics, and Probability: probability; mean, median, mode, and range; collecting and visualizing data.
Algebraic Reasoning: writing algebraic formulas; testing for equivalence.

Science

Curriculum Overview

In sixth grade Science, we seek to maintain a classroom environment that encourages discovery, diligence, reflection, and respect. Our inquiry-based science classes leverage students’ innate curiosity of the world around them by exploring natural phenomena. Hands-on investigations are the heart of the science lab. Working collaboratively and individually, students plan and carry out inquiries and experiments. Obtaining information and data from investigations and research, students learn to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. With practice, they develop strategies and skills to construct explanations based on their findings. Making claims that are grounded in evidence, students develop arguments that support or refute their claims. This process leads to new, deeper questions that fuel the inquiry cycle, providing students ample opportunities to explore, discover, describe, and explain how the natural and designed world works. Asking the guiding questions, “What causes change? What elements of the past persist through time?”; we explore ways that Earth is constantly changing.

Essential Questions of the Course

How do scientists go about answering questions and solving problems?
What are the essential components of a scientific experiment?
What causes change?

Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Sixth grade Español is an immersive, proficiency-based class. Students begin to move away from memorized phrases to personal, spontaneous speech. Students are expected to participate in daily conversations and challenge themselves to use Spanish as much as possible during class. Students read, write, listen and speak in the target language and learn to add details to simple phrases. In-class experiences give students the opportunity to do lots of “trying” in the class including anything from new foods to new dance moves to conversations with new people. Cultural competence is an intangible but essential skill set developed in language class. Through videos, students will practice their listening comprehension in the target language, while at the same time learning different cultures of different Spanish speaking countries. This helps build a practice of seeing others as ourselves and also fosters life-long empathy towards others and consciousness around equality, equity, and social justice. Projects and independent research assigned in class give students new knowledge and expertise that they will then be able to share with their classmates. Students learn about traditions and celebrations through Latin America and Spain. At the end of the semester, students are able to compare and contrast, present traditions learned throughout the semester and share their traditions and opinions

Essential Questions of the Course

How can cognates help me understand Spanish more effectively?
How does learning about another culture help me see the world differently?
What are some similarities between Hispanic culture and mine?

Bilingual Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Students review and learn advanced grammar and at the same time they explore the culture and literature of the Hispanic world, particularly Spain and South America.

Students also read a selection of articles on current events to hold conversations on different topics. Students explore Latin culture and share their discoveries in group interactions, as well as through writing, oral presentation, and research projects. Class activities include skits and role plays, videos, and games.

Essential Questions of the Course

Why should I study Spanish?
How is language related to culture?
How do we use language to give information about ourselves and others?
How can I enhance my connection with people through language?

Drama

Curriculum Overview

In sixth grade drama, students learn about some of the basic touchstones of theatre history. Early human rituals, ancient Greek tragedy, and other epochs are explored as inspiration for short original pieces based on content of interest to the students. We strive to help students become connected to their ensemble, community and their world, more comfortable in their own skin, and increasingly courageous in making choices. We aim for them to take bold positive risks, be more actively curious and reflective as listeners, and more willing to play with enthusiasm.

Essential Questions of the Course

How do I relate to history through change of theatre?
Why has theatre continued to persist in the human experience?
How may we engage our testimony of Simplicity as a useful challenge in our work?

Music

Curriculum Overview

In this sixth grade course, the primary instrumental emphasis is on ukuleles. Building upon our music theory work from last year, students continue to deepen their connections to written music, specifically rhythm and the notes of the treble clef. Students are expected to play a variety of scale patterns and learn a variety of major, minor and 7th chords. Learning melodies and sight reading are regular activities to strengthen both understanding and the physical coordination between the hands. Singing on songs will be encouraged. Our repertoire includes pieces from traditional, folk and popular repertoire. Additional musical concepts including song structure, listening, and creativity are emphasized in both large and smaller group settings.

Essential Questions of the Course

What is my role in an ensemble?
What skills do I need to learn to master my instrument?
What are things that musicians regularly do to perform at their best?
What can watching and listening to other musicians teach us about our own performance?
What does it mean to make a meaningful critique on my playing as well as the group sound?
What are the ways I can contribute to an ensemble beyond just my playing?

Design

Curriculum Overview

A Makerspace benefits students by engaging, encouraging, and exploring learning at a deeper level. It’s important for students to learn a maker mindset that includes creative thinking, solving complex problems, iterative thinking, critical thinking, perseverance, thinking divergently, and the engineering process. The sixth grade Design/Technology course is a one-quarter class that teaches students to learn how to safely and effectively use design, crafting, and building tools. Students also learn how to clean and care for the Maker Space.

Projects

Students start the semester with a design challenge that teaches them the design process and how to use materials like hot glue guns, paint, hand tools, cutting implements, and other manipulatives to practice working and cleaning in the Maker Space. The second project introduces the bandsaw, sanding belt, and drill press to teach students important shop tool safety and protocol. Students may have a laser cut project (laser cutter operated by the instructor only) in combination with this second lesson build. The third project introduces sewing and jewelry with projects that teach basic crafting. The fourth project introduces basic coding concepts using MicroBits. Students will combine a programming output with one of their first 3 lessons to create an interactive final project.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can I engage my creative and maker brain for projects that require both design and fabrication skills, while having fun and being safe?
In the design process, one important step is testing to see if a project works and is made well, and then improving if it needs it. How can I create something that I then test and improve upon, while gaining confidence in my maker abilities?
How can I be a good steward of the Maker Space and work safely, thoughtfully, and with regular cleaning protocols, ensuring that it is ready for incoming users when my class/elective/club is over?

Physical Education

Curriculum Overview

Essential Questions of the Course

How am I changing and growing as an athlete?
How are traditional team sports similar and different from recreational games?
Where do I need to focus to improve?
How can I Improve my participation and skill?
How can I support my team fairly?
What role do I play in my team?
How do I contribute to a positive and encouraging sports class for everyone?
What strategies can I learn and devise particular to each sport?
How do I handle winning, losing and personal disappointments and successes?

Seventh Grade

Seventh Grade Course Descriptions

Humanities

Curriculum Overview

Seventh grade Humanities aims to expose students to myriad genres of written and artistic expression. We aim to create an environment of inquiry and intellectual risk, sustained by daily practice. From stopping at a new word to asking big questions about the individual’s role in society, Humanities students habitually connect general to specific and personal to universal.

Increased independence is encouraged and students share responsibility for group and whole class discussions. Seventh graders are expected to communicate independently and regularly with teachers.

Content understanding and skill acquisition build incrementally over the course of the year. We begin the year by investigating the role of memory on a personal level. What memories stick with us and why? We develop an understanding of how memory works, culminating by the end of the year in a project that reflects on the relationship between personal and collective memory.

In the first semester we read a variety of fiction and non fiction and work on finding theme. We toggle between different genres and mediums to connect themes across texts. Some vital discussions concern how an individual finds their voice in a group. Students write a literary analysis of the novel with an option to bring in the film as well.

Students engage in two different book groups, the first with a theme of economy and the second with a focus on the Holocaust.

Our second semester focuses on moments of historical inhumanity-the Holocaust and South African apartheid. Our way in will be through fiction and then the graphic memoir Maus. Lastly we turn to Trevor Noah’s memoir about growing up in apartheid South Africa, Born a Crime. We end the year by coming full circle back to personal memory but this time connecting it to larger historical forces.

Essential Questions of the Course

How do chance and choice shape our identity?
How is personal memory related to collective memory and understanding?
What is the power of naming?
How do we define our universe of obligation?
What are components of a democracy and how are they vulnerable?
How do we benefit from a variety of source materials?
How do we individually and collectively repair wrongs?

Math

Curriculum Organization

Seventh graders study topics in-depth that focus on the strands of Number, Geometry, Algebra, and Data. The goal is for students to see mathematics as a discipline full of connections among concepts and to other disciplines—not merely as a collection of isolated skills. Units are designed around a series of experiences that encourage students to explore, theorize, test ideas, revise, debate and develop meaning of mathematical concepts.

Curriculum Units

Number Sense and Operations: proportional reasoning; “extreme” numbers and exponents; order of operations.
Geometry: tiling and tessellations; drawing and measuring angles; angles relationships at transversal of parallel lines; volume and surface area; scaling.
Data, Statistics, and Probability: probability (expected value); box-and-whisker plots, stem-and leaf plots; analyzing a set of data for meaning.
Algebraic Reasoning: graphing stories; linear functions; distributive property; introduction to inequalities; combining like terms; multiplying binomials; balancing equations.

Science

Curriculum Overview

Seventh grade science is focused on Life Science. We have a few principles that guide our path through the curriculum:

Scientific phenomena are complex and present all around us.
Science is a collaborative process that deconstructs the complex into understandable models and metaphors. By using these models and metaphors, we can design new explanations.

The goals for the class are to show the impact of science on life, and to apply the tools of science to areas of interest. We do investigations in cell biology and genetics and explore the relationship between structure and function, as well as evolution and the history of life on Earth.

Essential Questions of the Course

What processes sustain life?
What explains the diversity of life that we see on our planet?
What are the steps one can use to deeply investigate a concept, question, or system?

Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Seventh grade Español is an immersive, proficiency-based class. The teacher's job is to flood students with understandable, high-frequency Spanish. The students’ job is to read and listen actively and to speak, write, and gesture in response to prompts, both to help them absorb the meaning and to give the teacher clear feedback about their understanding. A 40–minute live Spanish class is incredibly rigorous, both mentally and physically!

Cultural competence is an intangible but essential skill set developed in language class. Krashen observed that “more speaking or writing does not result in more language development, but more reading does.” Our course content presents both “mirrors and windows”*: when we open windows exploring ways of life different from our own, we inevitably turn mirrors on ourselves to consider our own life and habits from a new perspective. Ultimately, building a practice of seeing others as ourselves also fosters life-long empathy towards others and consciousness around equality, equity, and social justice.

* Credit to Rudine Sims Bishop and Emily Styles

Essential Questions of the Course

How might I use the Spanish words I know to understand and be understood?
How are Spanish and English similar and different?
Which features of Spanish-speaking cultures seem different from mine and which might be universal?

Bilingual Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Students review and learn advanced grammar and at the same time they explore the culture and literature of the Hispanic world, particularly Spain and South America.

Students strengthen their communicative skills with a focus on vocabulary expansion, mastery of advanced grammatical structures and an understanding of the uses of indicative, conditional, subjunctive, and imperative, as well as progressive and compound tenses: The present perfect and the past perfect. We also work with direct and indirect pronouns and different uses of the most common prepositions such as por/para/de and more.

In class we cover a variety of topics, each infused with new grammar and an expansion on vocabulary.

Pronunciation and oral expression are reinforced and stimulated by reading and writing. This year the seventh and eighth graders will read the book: “El Soñador” by Pam Muñoz and Peter Sís, as well as short stories by Latin American (Julio Cortazar, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, García Marquez) and Spanish authors (Miguel de Cervantes, García Lorca, Antonio Machado) Students also read a selection of articles on current events to hold conversations on different topics.

Students explore Latin culture and share their discoveries in group interactions, as well as through writing, oral presentation and research projects. The class activities also include skits and role plays, videos, and games.

Essential Questions of the Course

How does one express different aspects of their identity in diverse situations?
How do culture and language influence the identity of a person?
What is the role of identity in the customs and celebrations of a community?

Collaborative Class

Curriculum Overview

The Collaborative classes offer a unique experience for middle school students. Designed and taught collaboratively by grade level Math, Humanities, and Science teachers, these classes are a time for students to dive into big questions that require skills and understanding from across the disciplines. Students develop multifaceted problem solving skills and the ability to investigate complex understandings with multiple perspectives that go beyond a single discipline. Synthesis is key. By intentionally looking at global issues, we are preparing students to have agency over their own lives and to understand their connection to others. This class provides a dynamic environment where students can develop their voices, learn from each other, and connect to communities and experts outside of our school.

Essential Question of the Course

What forces of culture have shaped or continue to shape who you are?

Drama

Curriculum Overview (Improv Elective)

In drama class, we explore the power of “Yes! And…” while (working on) establishing grounded scene-starts, and discovering the power of playing with status and the fun of many many story styles.

Essential Questions of the Course

How might I strive to improvise and perform comedy how I feel is right?
How do I perform with truth and honor the improvisational snd comic truths of others?
How may we engage our testimony of Simplicity as a useful challenge in our work?

Music

Curriculum Overview (Brass Chorale Elective)

In Brass Chorale, students learn how to play trumpet or trombone in this brass-only ensemble. Music theory skills and note-reading are emphasized as students develop the fundamentals of embouchure, breath control, and tone development. Music consists of songs from classical, folk, and popular repertoire.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can I contribute to my classroom community through stewardship of the music room and its instruments?
How can I focus my attention on improving my own musical abilities?
How can I support others in improving their musical abilities?
How can I bring others joy through music performance?
Why are the arts important to a life well-lived?

Design

Curriculum Overview

A Makerspace benefits students by engaging, encouraging, and exploring learning at a deeper level. It’s important to for students to learn a maker mindset that includes creative thinking, solving complex problems, iterative thinking, critical thinking, perseverance, thinking divergently, and the engineering process. The seventh grade Design/Technology course is a one-quarter class that teaches students to learn how to safely and effectively use design, crafting, and building tools. Students also learn how to clean and care for the Maker Space.

Projects

How can I engage my creative and maker brain for projects that require both design and fabrication skills, while having fun and being safe?
In the design process, one important step is testing to see if a project works and is made well, and then improving if it needs it. How can I create something that I then test and improve upon, while gaining confidence in my maker abilities?
How can I be a good steward of the Maker Space and work safely, thoughtfully, and with regular cleaning protocols, ensuring that it is ready for incoming users when my class/elective/club is over?

Physical Education

Curriculum Overview

Our main focus is to build on each student’s agility, balance and coordination through fitness stations, dynamic warm-ups, both sport and non-specific skill-building and cooperative games. Full participation in class is an overall focus along with students moving towards the goal of making independent choices about physical activity and healthy habits in the future.

Essential Questions of the Course

What are the ways I am an athlete?
What are the ways self-governing competitive games can benefit a group?
How are my school’s values reflected in what I do in class?
How can collaboration lead to a greater understanding of how I build skills?
How can I improve my participation, engagement and focus on improvement in a group setting?
How can I be an excellent teammate?
How do I see myself in a positive and collaborative learning community?
What strategies can I employ to build communication and skill fluency ?
How do I adjust to different situations?

Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade Course Descriptions

Humanities

Curriculum Overview

Eighth grade Humanities hones students’ writing, reading, and critical-thinking skills. An emphasis on increased independence is encouraged and students share responsibility for class discussions. Eighth graders are expected to communicate independently and regularly with teachers and to research in greater depth when encountering unknown subjects. Cooperative work and conversation are essential. Areas of instruction, feedback, and assessment include generating original content, word choice, organization, and revision in writing; active reading and interpretation of literature; leadership and engagement in discussion; and connecting, understanding, and questioning of historical content.

The content areas in eighth grade Humanities emerge from the context of US history. Justice and democracy are major through-lines. Students start the year with reading Animal Farm, setting the stage for conversations about the pull between “ideals” and “reals” in US government, both at its founding and today. Students study major executive orders, legislation, and landmark cases and make persuasive arguments about policy changes they would like to see today. Our reading of The 57 Bus gives us an opportunity to continue discussing issues related to justice, on a more local level. A close examination of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments provides a pivot to our examination of the art and literature of the Great Migration, and finally, we close the year with a unit on science-fiction as social critique in the 1950's. While engaged with the past, our goal will always be to make connections to the present so that students can clearly see how our current moment is rooted in history. Major literature includes: Animal Farm, The 57 Bus, A Raisin in the Sun, and Fahrenheit 451 as well as several short stories, and poetry.

Essential Questions of the Course

What are the basic human rights all members of a community should be guaranteed? Who is responsible for ensuring equity and addressing past injustice?
How do the words and actions of the founders both promote and prevent democracy?
Why and how must a democracy both represent the majority and protect the minority?
How has US law helped and hindered the goal of achieving a just society?
How does sense of place and migration impact the evolution of culture?
What is the relationship between language and power?
How do art and education help people see beyond the single story? How do they power social change?

Math

Curriculum Overview

Eighth graders study topics in-depth that focus on the strands of Number, Geometry, Algebra, and Data. The goal is for students to see mathematics as a discipline full of connections among concepts and to other disciplines—not merely as a collection of isolated skills. Units are designed around a series of experiences that encourage students to explore, theorize, test ideas, revise, debate and develop meaning of mathematical concepts. The overarching goals of the year are to stretch students' problem solving skills and increase their ability to comfortably operate with numbers. Because the concepts and units will be challenging at times, students are expected to make mistakes and bring a willingness to try again in moments of difficulty.

Curriculum Units

Algebraic Reasoning: linear functions; systems of equations; quadratic equations; factoring polynomials; exponential growth and decay; inequalities.
Geometry: Pythagorean Theorem; Taxi and Euclidean distances.
Data, Statistics, and Probability: histograms ad box plots; best fit lines; outliers/biases in data; correlation vs. causation.
Number Sense and Operations: radical expressions; exponent laws; prime factorization.

Science

Curriculum Overview

Eighth grade Science focuses on Physical Science. We explore how the physical world around us works - from stars to atoms. Each unit has a culminating activity where students get to show their understanding through presentations, research, experimentation, discussion and more. Our units are Astronomy, Physics, Coding and Circuits, Chemistry, and Light and Perception. The goal for eighth graders is to be curious about how the world works and have the tools and information to find the answers to their questions. As they enter high school, we want them to have confidence in their science skills as well as enjoyment of the subject itself.

Essential Questions of the Course

What explains how the world around us works?
How does the makeup of everything around us contribute to its behavior?
What are the steps one can use to deeply investigate a concept, question, or system?

Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Eighth grade Español is an immersive, proficiency-based class. Students are expected to speak as much Spanish as possible. Students are expected to participate in daily conversations and challenge themselves to use Spanish and limit their English speaking. The use of English is limited to situations where communication breaks down in spite of all attempts in Spanish. This includes talking to classmates. Students review present verb tense including: regular, irregular, stem-changing, present progressive and ‘tú’ commands. In reading, they practice reading through context, learning to grasp the gist of the idea, identifying new vocabulary, and making connections to past knowledge to make guesses to meaning. Students practice their writing in complete sentences, practicing their editing skills, adding details and making connections to themes and topics.

Cultural competence is an intangible but essential skill set developed in language class. Students practice their listening comprehension in the target language, while at the same time learning different cultures of different Spanish speaking countries. There are also opportunities to learn about current events of Spanish speaking countries and discussion around topics of social justice. At the end of the semester, students feel more confident in ‘juggling’ different tenses, increase their vocabulary and are able to make deeper connections to comments and topics discussed in class.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can cognates help me understand Spanish more effectively?
How does learning about another culture help me see the world differently?
How does history connect us?

Bilingual Spanish

Curriculum Overview

Students review and learn advanced grammar and at the same time they explore the culture and literature of the Hispanic world, particularly Spain and South America.

Students strengthen their communicative skills with a focus on vocabulary expansion, mastery of advanced grammatical structures and an understanding of the uses of indicative, conditional, subjunctive, and imperative, as well as progressive and compound tenses: The present perfect and the past perfect. Students also work with direct and indirect pronouns and different uses of the most common prepositions such as por/para/de and more.

In class we cover a variety of topics, each infused with new grammar and an expansion on vocabulary.

Pronunciation and oral expression are reinforced and stimulated by reading and writing. This year the class of seventh and eighth graders will read the book: “El Soñador” by Pam Muñoz and Peter Sís, as well as short stories by Latin American (Julio Cortazar, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, García Marquez) and Spanish authors (Miguel de Cervantes, García Lorca, Antonio Machado) Students also read a selection of articles on current events to hold conversations on different topics.

Students explore Latin culture and share their discoveries in group interactions, as well as through writing, oral presentation and research projects. The class activities include skits and role plays, videos, and games.

Essential Questions of the Course

How does one express different aspects of their identity in diverse situations?
How do culture and language influence the identity of a person?
What is the role of identity in the customs and celebrations of a community?

Collaborative Class

Curriculum Overview

Our Collaborative classes offer a unique experience for middle school students. Designed and taught collaboratively by grade level Math, Humanities, and Science teachers, these classes are a time for students to dive into big questions that require skills and understanding from across the disciplines. Eighth grade Collaborative class has a particular emphasis on the Quaker values of stewardship and community, beginning with an exploration of local issues in San Francisco neighborhoods before broadening the lens to include communities in the states of the American South in connection with our field studies program, and finally, investigating climate change issues in a range of global communities in our third unit. This class provides an environment where students can develop their voices, learn from each other, and connect to communities and experts outside of our school.

Essential Questions of the Course

How do history and geography affect how culture evolves?
When and why is it important to preserve location specific to culture?
What does stewardship of a community look like? Who is responsible for that stewardship?
How do government policies effectively or ineffectively steward the community?
What are the forces (structural, environmental) that create both positive and negative changes in communities?
When and how are we obligated to repair historic injustices? Who decides what this looks like?

Design

Curriculum Overview

The eighth grade Design/Technology course is an advanced one-quarter class that allows students to use the Maker Space to use prior experience in Design to create projects independently. Students can also choose from a variety of challenges assigned by the instructor.

Projects

A Makerspace benefits students by engaging, encouraging, and exploring learning at a deeper level. It’s important to create a maker mindset that includes creative thinking, solving complex problems, iterative thinking, critical thinking, perseverance, thinking divergently, and the engineering process. Rules & Procedures are a must for the Makerspace area, especially when students are enrolled in Independent Study, not only because of health and safety, but also because it’s important to focus on the process and not the outcome. Failures in the Maker Space are celebrated as they are great learning experiences.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can I engage my creative and maker brain for projects that require both design and fabrication skills, while having fun and being safe?
In the design process, one important step is testing to see if a project works and is made well, and then improving if it needs it. How can I create something that I then test and improve upon, while gaining confidence in my maker abilities?
How can I be a good steward of the Maker Space and work safely, thoughtfully, and with regular cleaning protocols, ensuring that it is ready for incoming users when my class/elective/club is over?

Drama

Curriculum Overview

Pantomime Elective

Students learn some of the basics of pantomime, silent (film) acting, and physical acting.

Body language, exaggerated walks/gestures, mime objects & real props, etc.
Creating simple scenes without talking for comic and dramatic effect.

Improve Elective

Students learn some of the basics of improvisational acting and improvising a longer play.

Essential Questions of the Courses

What is pantomime, and how did silent film actors succeed in creating fun stories?
How may I stretch my acting skills by playing scenes and exercises that require no talking?
How may we engage our testimony of Simplicity as a useful challenge in our work?

Music

Curriculum Overview (Guitar Ensemble Elective)

In Guitar Ensemble, students build upon existing ukulele and/or guitar skills from sixth and seventh grades. Fundamental guitar concepts such as open-position chords, strumming, and fingerpicking are explored. Students who have taken Guitar Ensemble in seventh grade are expected to learn more melodic material and use barre positions on familiar chords. Students work regularly on music theory topics such as harmonic progressions, scales, and melodic reading. Singing is welcome and songs are drawn from folk, popular, and classical repertoire.

Essential Questions of the Course

How can I contribute to my classroom community through stewardship of the music room and its instruments?
How can I focus my attention on improving my own musical abilities?
How can I support others in improving their musical abilities?
How can I bring others joy through music performance?
Why are the arts important to a life well-lived?

Physical Education

Curriculum Overview

Essential Questions of the Course

What are the ways I am an athlete?
What are the ways self-governing competitive games can benefit a group?
How are my school’s values reflected in what I do in class?
How can collaboration lead to a greater understanding of how I build skills?
How can I improve my participation, engagement and focus on improvement in a group setting?
How can I be an excellent teammate?
How do I see myself in a positive and collaborative learning community?
What strategies can I employ to build communication and skill fluency ?
How do I adjust to different situations?