Middle School

• Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development
  Students use their knowledge of word origins and word relationships, as well as historical and literary context clues, to determine the meaning of grade-level-appropriate words.
• Reading Comprehension (Focus on Informational Materials)
  Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material. They describe and connect the essential ideas, arguments, and perspective of the text by using their knowledge of text structure, organization, and purpose. In addition, by grade eight, students read one million words annually on their own, including a good representation of grade-level-appropriate narrative and expository text (e.g., classic and contemporary literature, magazines, newspapers, online information).
• Literary Response and Analysis
  Students read and respond to historically or culturally significant works of literature that reflect and enhance their studies of history and social science. They clarify the ideas and connect them to other literary works.

In Grade 6 students will study: Students in grade six expand their understanding of history by studying the people and events that ushered in the dawn of the major Western and non-Western ancient civilization. Geography is of special significance in the development of the human story. Continued emphasis is placed on the everyday lives, problems, and accomplishments of people, their role in developing social, economic, and political structures, as well as in establishing and spreading ideas that helped transform the world forever.

In Grades 7 students will study:
Students in grade seven study the social, cultural, and technological changes that occurred in Europe, Africa and Asia in the years A.D. 500-1789. After reviewing the ancient world and the ways in which archaeologists and historians uncover the past, students study the history and geography of great civilizations that were developing concurrently throughout the world during medieval and early modern times.

In Grade 6 students will study:
• Focus on Earth Sciences
• Plate Tectonics and Earth’s Structure
• Heat (Thermal Energy) (Physical Sciences)
• Energy in the Earth System
• Ecology (Life Sciences)
• Resources
• Investigation and Experimentation

Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.

In Grade 7 students will study:
• Cell Biology
• Genetics
• Evolution
• Earth and Life History (Earth Sciences)
• Structure and Function in Living Systems
• Physical Principles in Living Systems (Physical Sciences)
• Investigation and Experimentation

Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.

In Grade 8 students will study:
• Focus on Physical Sciences
• Motion
• Forces
• Structure of Matter
• Earth in the Solar System (Earth Sciences)
• Reactions
• Chemistry of Living Systems (Life Sciences)
• Periodic Table
• Density and Buoyancy
• Investigation and Experimentation

Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.

By the end of grade six, students have mastered the four arithmetic operations with whole numbers, positive fractions, positive decimals, and positive and negative integers; they accurately compute and solve problems. They apply their knowledge to statistics and probability. Students understand the concepts of mean, median, and mode of data sets and how to calculate the range.

By the end of grade seven, students are adapt to manipulating numbers and equations and understand the general principles at work. Students understand and use factoring of numerators and denominators and properties of exponents. They know the Pythagorean Theorem and solve problems in which they compute the length of an unknown side. Students know how to compute the surface area and volume of basic three-dimensional objects and understand how area and volume change with a change in scale. Students make conversions between different units of measurement.

By the end of grade eight, students have mastered symbolic reasoning and calculations with symbols that are central in algebra. Through the study of algebra, a student develops an understanding of the symbolic language of mathematics and the sciences. In addition, algebraic skills and concepts are developed and used in a wide variety of problem-solving situations.

The standards for grade eight are organized differently from those for kindergarten through grade seven. In this section strands are not used for organizational purposes as they are in the elementary grades because the mathematics studied in grade eight falls naturally under the discipline heading: algebra.