Creative Arts Charter School
Seventh and Eighth Grades

Seventh & Eighth Grades

Language Arts

The 7th and 8th Grade Language Arts curriculum primarily focuses on student development in the following three content areas: grammatical principles, reading comprehension, and writing strategies. Students develop and refine their competencies through both project-based learning and direct instruction.

The grammatical principles portion of the curriculum challenges all students to increase their knowledge and subsequent utilization of elementary and sophisticated grammatical principles through exercises focusing on word analysis, language fluency, and systematic vocabulary development. Every week, students are assigned vocabulary words to develop the basic syntax skills of spelling and defining the words while identifying sentence context clues in preparation for a vocabulary test. Students also enhance and employ these basic skills through a guided-editing process of sample papers and during the final stage of all writing projects.

Students improve reading comprehension skills through a variety of exercises that are integrated with cultural arts, social studies, and language arts activities. Students read, discuss, interpret, and analyze class novels representing different genres of literature. Through in-class guided practice, students utilize the following comprehension strategies: predicting, clarifying, questioning, summarizing, inferring and making connections to other texts. The class novels also serve as exemplary models of story structure, theme, and literary devices that are subsequently applied to the multi-faceted projects. For example, the curriculum for The Cay by Theodore Taylor demonstrates this integration of constructivist learning with direct instruction. Students create posters symbolizing the theme, write journal entries from different characters' points of view, identify and illustrate literary devices, compose alternative endings, and design costumes and sets for the book's theatrical debut.

Writers' workshop combines mini-lessons with student-centered activities that reinforce all stages of the writing process and Language Arts curriculum through the integration of vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension into each major writing project. An example of a writers' workshop project is the intensive two-month long Oral History Project which incorporates the following writing development strategies: reading published biographies, composing questions, interviewing a mature adult, synthesizing the acquired information into a biography, and culminating the experience with a public-forum speech about their respective interviewee at a luncheon.

Social Studies

The 7th and 8th grade Social Studies curriculum primarily centers on the geographic, social, cultural, and technological changes that currently affect societies throughout history and today. The 7th grade curriculum centers on major historical events occurring in Europe, Asia, and Africa from 500 C.E. to 1780 C.E. and the 8th grade curriculum focuses on United States History from Pre-Colonial settlement through the end of World War II in 1945.

The curriculum utilizes students' increasing understandings of chronological and spatial thinking, evidence, perspective, causes-and-effect reasoning, and historical interpretation in order to develop an in-depth awareness of the complex mechanisms that created the social, political, and economic landscapes throughout history. Students are encouraged to notice and become astutely aware of which individuals' voices are heard and identify unheard individuals and their socioeconomic status. To enrich student understanding in history, the curriculum units utilize the following materials and techniques: primary and secondary texts, core novels, simulations, period art pieces, and mock trials.

A representative unit of this multi-faceted Social Studies curriculum is an 8th grade unit focusing on Native Americans. Students closely read and thoroughly analyze different Native American Creation Stories, study Native American art, and subsequently utilize this newly acquired knowledge to write and illustrate their own Creation Stories. By reading primary and secondary sources, students recognize whose voice is heard and absence of the Native Americans' voices in official international government documents. They rectify the injustices through revised treaty conventions and debates with the Native American representatives present. Students also follow the Native American's painful path along the Trial of Tears through their music and poetry, to the missionary assimilation (or cultural annihilation) schools, and finally, to the current plight of Native American reservations. The variety of texts, mediums of presentation, and forums for critical analysis create a multi-dimensional view of history and challenges students to understand rather than memorize the events of our collective past.

Math and Science

In order to learn about science, students must be actively engaged in the natural and technological world in which they live. Science cannot be taught in neat rows with handouts and an overhead projector, for students must grapple with the ideas of science in order to make sense of them while building the awareness that science is a process of inquiry, not a static accumulation of facts. CACS utilizes constructivist pedagogical strategies that require students to manipulate their learning environment and the tools in it. Art and technology are also continually integrated throughout the curriculum. Units are project-based and designed to culminate in a presentation that incorporates art and technology.

The middle school math and science curriculum is integrated and encourages students to collaborate while solving real life problems. For example, scientific method is taught by having students express questions regarding the world in which they live, research their questions and form hypotheses, design and construct testing methods, analyze and present data, and form conclusions.

Because the study of science is multi-faceted, the middle school science curriculum examines many areas of science. Physical, Biological, Earth, and Health Sciences are addressed in the seventh and eighth grade. Units are designed in accordance with the California State Science Framework. Examples of units include:

Science topics and projects include:

  • Physical science, where students explore potential and kinetic energy by constructing a timing device
  • Biology, where students construct models of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and the steps of mitosis
  • Anatomy and physiology, where students design and create children's books about various systems of the body
  • Health science, where students study infectious and noninfectious disease and create multimedia presentations with their findings
  • Earth science, where students construct the earth's plates and replicate earthquakes and plate movements

Math units are also designed in accordance with the state framework. Seventh grade math is devoted to arithmetic, geometry, and pre-algebra. Eighth grade math is devoted to pre-algebra and algebra. Examples of units and projects covered in math include:

Math units and projects include:

  • Arithmetic
  • Pre-algebra
  • Algebra
  • Geometry, where students design and build a model of their ideal home
  • Graphing, where students display their data from scientific investigations.
  • Surface area and volume of three-dimensional figures, where students sketch and calculate various prisms and pyramids.