Middle School Language Arts Courses

This course is designed to review and reinforce Language Arts skills normally presented in the 5th grade and to prepare students for a 6th grade English curriculum. An emphasis will be placed on oral participation. Students will read a variety of literary selections to increase comprehension skills and predict outcomes. Students will plan, draft, revise, and edit their writing with attention to composition and style, as well as sentence formation, usage and mechanics.

This course is intended for the advanced student and will cover topics presented in the 6th Grade English curriculum with an emphasis in critical thinking and reasoning. Students will be asked to read more challenging texts and to write more complex compositions.

This course is designed to review and reinforce Language Arts skills normally presented in the 6th grade and to prepare students for 7th grade. Students will develop their reading skills, oral communication skills, written composition skills, and vocabulary. Group discussions will be an integral component of this class. An emphasis will be placed on an in-depth and specific analysis of literature. Students’ writing will become more refined through methods of organization and writing strategies.

The advanced class will cover topics presented in the 7th grade English curriculum with a stronger emphasis in critical thinking and reasoning. Reading comprehension and writing will employ a more advanced use of analogies, idioms, similes and metaphors. Students will continue to write in a variety of forms.

This course is designed to prepare students for an 8th grade English curriculum. There will be an emphasis on the appreciation for literature through a study of literary elements. Reading comprehension will emphasize the description of themes, interpretation of cause-effect relationships, and the drawing of conclusions from a variety of literary selections.

This advanced class will cover topics presented in the 8th grade English curriculum and is designed to prepare students for high school English courses, with a more advanced application of knowledge of the characteristics and elements of various literary forms, such as short stories, essays, speeches, lyric and narrative poems, plays or novels. Students will write in a variety of forms, including narrative, expository and persuasive.

The myths of the Greeks and Romans are interesting and enjoyable in their own right. Knowledge of Classical Mythology is also an invaluable resource for understanding the art and thought of the Western tradition, providing a vast set of stories and symbols for ancient and modern writers, artists, and thinkers. Moreover, the myths themselves provide an excellent starting point for the study of Greek and Roman culture. This course will provide an introduction to the major myths of Greece and Rome—including the creation of the cosmos, Olympians and other deities, and human heroes and their exploits—both as they appear in Greek and Roman literature and art and as they are represented in modern art, music, and film.

This course is intended for high achieving students looking to explore an intellectually demanding subject