Middle School
History and Geography
Seventh Grade
Seventh graders will examine America becoming a world power, World War I 1914-1918, geography of western and central Europe, The Russian Revolution, America from the twenties to the New Deal, World War II, and the geography of The United States.
Eighth Grade
Eighth graders will study the decline of European Colonialism, the creation of The People’s Republic of China, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the rise of social activism, the Middle East and oil politics, the end of the Cold War and the expansion of democracy and its continuing challenges, Civics – the Constitution-Principles and Structure of American Democracy, and the geography of Canada and Mexico.
Language Arts
Seventh Grade
Seventh graders will study writing, grammar, and usage, spelling, vocabulary, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short stories, novels, essays, speeches, autobiography, drama, and Latin foreign phrases commonly used in English. Authors examined: O’Henry, Guy de Maupassant, James Thurber, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London, Mark Twain, George Orwell, Franklin Roosevelt, Anne Frank, and Edmond Rostand.
Eighth Grade
Seventh graders will study writing, grammar, and usage, spelling, vocabulary, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short stories, novels, essays, speeches, and French foreign phrases commonly used in English. Authors examined: Anton Chekov, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Stephan Crane, George Orwell, Pearl S. Buck, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., E.B. White, Rachel Carson, Maya Angelou, and Shakespeare.
Mathematics
Seventh Grade
Seventh graders explore geometry: three-dimensional objects, symmetry, angle pairs, triangles, and area. The students work with whole numbers, fractions, and decimals, and algebraic equations. Students manipulate data using coordinate planes, proportions, statistics, and probability. Some seventh graders will proceed to algebra from the sixth grade.
Eighth Grade
Eighth graders work with geometry and the projection of a line segment onto the coordinate axes, perpendiculars and problems of the shortest distance, properties of triangles, and spheres. They work with numbers in calculations with rational numbers, integer exponents, equations and expressions, numeric comparisons and inequalities (algebra). Students organize and present linear data using linear applications and proportionality, and its applications to percentages. Some eighth graders will proceed to geometry if they completed algebra as a seventh grader.
Music
Seventh Grade
Seventh graders review orchestra and families of instruments and vocal ranges: soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass. Students will recognize introduction, interlude, and coda in musical selections. They will recognize theme and variation, identify chords, octaves, and musical notation and terms. Students study the Romantic composers and their works: Brahms, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner; Music and National identity: Dvorak, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky. In seventh grade students will examine American musical traditions such as Blues and Jazz.
Eighth Grade
Eighth graders review orchestra and families of instruments and vocal ranges: soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and bass. Students will recognize introduction, interlude, and coda in musical selections. They will recognize theme and variation, identify chords, octaves, and musical notation and terms. Young people become familiar with non-western music: scales, instruments, and works from various lands, i.e. 12-tone scale, sitar from India, Caribbean steel drums, Japanese Koto. Eighth graders will continue learning about classical music: Nationalists, Sibelius, Bartok, Rodrigo, Copland and Moderns, Debussy, and Stravinsky. Students will study vocal music from both opera and American musical theater.
Science
Seventh Grade
In seventh grade students will work with atomic structure, early theories of matter, and the start of modern chemistry. They will continue with chemical bonds (Ionic, Metallic, Covalent) and reactions. Students will venture into cell division and genetics, as well as genetics and evolution. They will learn about weather versus climate, the composition of the atmosphere, effects of solar energy, weather and the water cycle, fronts and storms. They will become familiar with scientists such as Darwin, Lavoisier, Meitner, and Mendeleev.
Eighth Grade
Eighth graders work with several concepts of electricity: basic terms and concepts, electricity as the flow of electrons, static electricity, flowing electricity, magnetism and electricity, electromagnetic radiation and light, the electromagnetic spectrum, refraction and reflection. Students will explore sound waves: general properties, longitudinal and compression waves, frequency, and amplitude. They will become familiar with the chemistry of food, human nutrition and respiration, animal respiration. photosynthesis, and human health. They will examine plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Scientists to become knowledgeable about are: Hodgkin, Maxwell, Steinmetz, and Wegener.
Visual Arts
Seventh Grade
Seventh graders will study art history: periods and schools, impressionism, (Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt) postimpressionism, (Cezanne, Seurat, van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec) expressionism, (Matisse, Munch, Chagall, Picasso), and abstraction, (Duchamp, Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, Dali). Students will examine modern American painting. (Hopper, Wyeth, O’Keefe, Wood, Rivera, and Rockwell).
Eighth Grade
Eighth graders will study art history: periods and schools, painting since World War II, (Pollack, Kooning, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Bearden, Lawrence), photography, ( Steichen, Lange, Bourke-White, Adams, Cartier- Bresson), 20th century sculpture, (Rodin, Brancusi, Picasso, Moore, Calder, Nevelson, Oldenburg, Lin), architecture since the Industrial Revolution, metal structures, (Crystal Palace, Eiffel Tower), first skyscrapers, (Wainwright building, Chrysler Building, Empire State Building), International Style, Frank Lloyd Wright.