8th Grade Curriculm

The Middle School band puts on two major concerts per year and stages other smaller performances for the student body. A variety of styles, including jazz, classical, popular, and Broadway, are showcased. Students learn how to read music, assemble and produce a characteristic tone on their instrument, and develop finger technique, ensemble balance and dynamics. Band develops lifelong skills that increase brainpower and build discipline, and the course offers a team atmosphere in which students make beautiful music with their friends.

A yearlong course for students who seek to develop their vocal and musical skills. Students learn various types of literature, including but not limited to classical, pop, jazz and Broadway. The primary focus of each class is to learn to read music and then develop those skills in a more refined way. Students also learn to match pitch, develop healthy breathing techniques and improve tone quality. There are numerous opportunities for solos within the choral group, and students perform at concerts, assemblies and various school events throughout the year.

The strings course in grades six, seven, and eight encourages and develops lifelong skills such as discipline, teamwork and accountability in a fun environment. The Middle School strings ensemble performs on campus throughout the school year and travels in the spring.

Our STEAM elective in the Middle School is a modular track created to expose students to the wide range of STEAM applications. Each year, the track is designed to help students build skills in systems thinking, activism and entrepreneurship, collaboration, research and discovery and project management. 

Teachers on the STEAM track design their courses to cover five areas. Different courses and teachers may emphasize one area over another but each year will touch on all five in some capacity: 

1. Robotics and Programming

2. Engineering and Making

3. Digital Expression

4. Design

5. New Technology Issues and Application

In the eighth-grade STEAM elective, the year is again split into two semesters. One semester is advanced photography where students build on fundamentals of light, composition, and photo editing to create more complicated images and stories. The second semester is design exploration where students focus on different disciplines of design including engineering, product, game, information and graphic design. Students utilize various machines in the action studio such as the laser cutter, CNC router, and 3D printer to create different design projects.

Seventh and eighth graders who want to pursue visual art in more depth may take a yearlong study of art. The focus in both courses is on the 2D and 3D studio experience, but art history and field trips to local exhibits are other important components of the curriculum. Studio Art 8 refines students' understanding of creating a composition by developing works that are realistic, symbolic or totally abstract. There is a focus on both observational and imaginative projects, and students explore the more global focus in art and how one’s personal experiences and traditions are expressed visually throughout the world. Students use a variety of techniques for creating sculptural volumes and the illusion of the third dimension on a flat surface. (Studio Art 7 is not a prerequisite for Studio Art 8.)

Every eighth grade student will have visual art classes. The multi-media approach, which will include drawing, painting, and sculpture, will also coordinate with the academic curriculum whenever possible. The program will be process-based, encouraging students to take creative risks with ideas and materials. Besides making art, students will discuss concepts through verbal critiques; they will write evaluations of their work and they will explore the history of what has come before in the world of art. At all levels we will strive to clarify what art is.

"If to teach is to learn, then to learn is to question.” The topics covered in Holocaust and Civil Rights Studies allow students to learn, to question and to discuss. The lessons from the past, both from the Holocaust and from the Civil Rights Movement, help us frame our questions as we engage in learning from history. 

The opportunity to further develop time-management and independent study skills following the study strategies courses taught in the sixth and seventh grades.