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Here at CPCS Middle School, we follow a small class size model. This maximizes instructional and behavioral support for all students and best-individualizes their learning experience. Our instructional model consists of key elements that provide instructional coherence across the school. The workshop includes a mini-lesson or direct instruction, guided practice, independent application, assessment and review/sharing. Our Middle Schoolers each receive their own laptop that they carry to each class and home each evening for homework.
A comprehensive program that provides the resources needed to plan and assess effectively, as well as teach and engage students. The Match Fishtank curriculum uses the Common Core to engage students and build comprehension skills with materials leveled to ensure all readers receive the proper support and challenge. We use authentic texts in the classrooms to ensure that students are not just preparing for a standardized test, but preparing to be lifelong learners and active citizens. We ensure that the texts we choose reflect our students and our community.
In the Social Studies component of Humanities, our program includes history, economics, geography, and civics, citizenship, and government. Students learn about the community, workforce, connections to family, and diversity within and among cultural groups that span across time and geographical locations.
The books we read in Middle School Humanities classes include: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, Night by Elie Weisel, The Giver by, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland, A Raisin in the Sun, The House on Mango Street, Animal Farm, Persepolis, An Inconvenient Truth to Power by Al Gore.
We use Match Fishtank as our core mathematics program. Match Fishtank is closely aligned with the New York Common Core Standards and is differentiated to meet the needs of all learners. Our Middle School Math teachers often loop up with our students to ensure maximum cohesiveness to student learning.
The science program utilizes an investigations-based framework through the FOSS Program (Full Option Science System Program) . Children develop their scientific practice skills through observing, communicating with their classmates and the community, asking questions, testing out ideas and systems, and measuring. All students keep a science notebook where they record their observations and results through drawings, diagrams, questions, tables, and their own explanations.
Our art program is designed to aid students in growing their own individual ideas and creativity. Our Art Studio classroom is strategically designed to have instruction in every domain of art. Students learn the foundations of art history and artistic style. Students participate in units including: pottery and wheel throwing, sewing and fashion design, calligraphy, digital art, sketching, painting, still life, woodworking and multi-medium art.
Life Skills is a Middle School class encompassing a variety of skills students will need for the present and the future. In the geography and mapping unit, students learn foundational skills of geography coupled with real-life applications of navigating themselves around the city with the tools available to them. Our computer literacy unit builds on students’ typing skills, word processing, Excel and how to utilize their school laptops to their fullest extent. The professional skills unit encompasses skills that students will need for their first jobs and professional learning. Our final unit encompasses skills that students will need for life–such as how to cook a healthy meal, how to tie a tie, how to create a budget and how to track one’s personal expenses.
All of our Middle School students take state-mandated health class. There, students learn how to have a healthy lifestyle and prioritize their wellness.
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