Our Middle School Social Studies Curriculum provides our students with two years of World History and one year of American History/ Civics. Our program is designed to meet the Middle School requirements of the New Jersey Social Studies Core Curriculum Content Standards.
Our 6th graders will explore the Ancient World and our 7th graders will explore the Medieval and Early Modern Eras. Units in the 6th grade course include:
Early Human Societies, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Asian and American Civilizations, the Hebrew Kingdom, Greece, and Rome. Units in the 7th grade course include: Introduction to World History, The Growth of Islam, African Civilizations, Asian Civilizations, Medieval Societies, Civilizations of the Americas, European Renaissance and Reformation, The Age of Reason and the Age of Exploration.
Students will explore these topics through a variety of activities including reading, research and the visual arts, thereby attaining a background in geography, history, economics and the humanities. This knowledge can be tied to enrichment activities that incorporate cooperative learning and cross-curriculum study. Teachers will reinforce reading and writing skills as well as cause/effect, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, problem solving, and identifying main idea. Additionally, skills in reading and interpreting graphs, charts and other data will provide practice for standardized test questions. Finally this program will encourage the growth of a positive attitude toward people and cultures. It will introduce students to the many facets of a culture and show students that although different, people share the common bonds of decency and humanity, and all aspire to achieve similar goals.
The 8th grade course, The American Citizen, will explore the history of the country’s founding, examine the enduring government structures that were conceived in these early years, and consider how subsequent trends have shaped the identity and obligations of American citizens. Students will move from a study of the aspirations of the earliest settlers to the unique qualities of the disgruntled colonies and then to the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention. The next focus is on the three branches of government and the sacred liberties that sprang from these early experiences and Philadelphia meetings, with a steady emphasis on their current incarnations and import. The course’s final section considers how expansion, immigration, industrialization and war have altered the American Citizen’s sense of identity and duty. Several distinct themes and “essential questions” will help steer students through the course material, all of them supporting the overarching question of what it means to be an American citizen today.
The class will also consciously hone skills that reside at the heart of the social studies discipline. Students will read primary sources, research topics of interest, produce clear and coherent writing, and present arguments using both traditional public speaking skills and 21st century technologies. The curriculum is aligned to the 2009 New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards.
