What are you thinking about? What do you want to find out about? Are your kids looking forward to anything in particular in middle school? What was YOUR favorite subject in middle school, and why? Open thread means open to your comments, so have at it!
This is an interesting article on STEM and STEAM schools.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.naturec.org/blog/stem-schools-wheres-the-art-steam/
-KM
I think a thread on World Language would be good idea.
ReplyDeleteThere is talk at JA K-8 about adding a 2nd World Language to their middle school offerings (currently, just Spanish is offered at the K-8). I've heard they are thinking about adding Chinese (Mandarin?). From what I understand, two years of a World Language taken in middle school counts towards one year of high-school level World Language, so a student who has taken a World Language, for two years, in middle school could enter at the second year level in high school. Unfortunately, Chinese is not offered at Hale (and I don't think it is offered at Ingraham?), so continuing with Chinese at the high school level would not be an option.
I definitely see the need for JAMS to offer a choice of more than one World Language. What should those languages be? Nathan Hale currently offers French, Spanish, and Japanese.
Here is a link to the Hale course catalog:
http://halehighschool.info/course_info_12-13/master_course_catalog_02-08-12.pdf
Should JAMS offer French, Spanish, and Japanese, in order to tie into the offerings at Hale?
Thoughts?
-KM