Sixth - Eighth Grade
At Berkwood Hedge Middle School, sixth through eighth grade students experience a rich program of core academics, specialist classes, electives, and extracurricular activities. Our approach builds on the school’s strong foundation in project-based learning. Students dig deeply into topics that provide opportunities for them to ask, explore, and engage.
Language arts and social studies classes combine reading and writing with a deep exploration of the human experience and the social and political dynamics that shape history and the world we live in today. Our STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) curriculum emphasizes how an understanding of these subjects is relevant to our everyday lives and the vital role they play in the future. Integrated into students’ daily schedules are visual and performing arts classes, a key component of our well-rounded program.
Through Advising and restorative practices, students receive social-emotional support as they navigate the ups and downs of middle school, gaining the perspective and tools to help them thrive throughout early adolescence.
Language Arts
Middle school is a critical time for students, not just in terms of academic development but also in shaping who they are and how they communicate with the world around them. Language Arts plays a pivotal role in this process, offering students the skills, confidence, and the creativity to succeed. Students engage with a variety of text types and structures, including different genres of novels, longform nonfiction, short stories, essays, poetry, and audio-visual texts. Vocabulary, spelling, and grammar study are also embedded in writing instruction, and provide students with the tools they need to write with power.
Sixth Grade
What is the power of stories to convey cultural values, capture group’s attention, and engender emotion? Through text analysis, compare and contrast essays, personal narrative, and oral storytelling, including their own podcast episode, students use their understanding as readers to shape their storytelling skills.
Seventh Grade
Interdisciplinary projects, including one focused on the Disability Justice movement's connection to Berkeley, are introduced throughout the year. Students read a wide variety of texts including novels, poetry, nonfiction, memoirs, and study the craft of the informational essay.
Eighth Grade
Through interdisciplinary study of U.S. history, students read, write, and engage in Socratic Seminar discussions around the questions, “Who decides what is taught in schools?” and “How do people’s experiences inspire literature?” Increasingly complex texts are introduced as students work on an original work of fiction.
Mathematics
Middle school mathematics plays a pivotal role in shaping an individual’s lifelong success in a complex and dynamic world. It is not just about solving equations; it is about developing critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and a versatile skill set. Math is also the gateway to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Our math program provides the fundamental building blocks, such as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, that are essential for navigating more advanced mathematical concepts, and is flexible enough to serve students of all levels.
Sixth Grade
Through a combination of learning experiences on paper as well as with technology, students dive deeply into area and surface area, ratios, unit rates and percentages, dividing fractions, expressions and equations, positive and negative numbers, data sets and distributions, and decimal arithmetic.
Seventh Grade
Students delve deeper into algebraic, geometric, and statistical problem solving. Using integrated tech tools that model dynamic real-life problems, students explore mathematical concepts including: scale drawing, measuring circles, proportional relationships and percentages, positive and negative numbers, probability and sampling.
Eighth Grade
Using tools such as digital manipulatives, number machines, graphs, and scatter plots, students explore deeper mathematical concepts including: proportional and linear relationships, functions and volume, associations in data, exponents and scientific notation, and the Pythagorean Theorem and irrational numbers.
Science
Our science program is rooted in Next Generation Science Standards, and a place where students’ curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving skills flourish. Students engage with phenomena from the world around them, make observations, ask questions, explore, collect data, and draw conclusions. They develop interdisciplinary skills including technical literacy, data analysis, pattern recognition, and engineering principles.
Sixth Grade
The concept of Design Thinking is introduced. Students define the criteria and constraints of design problems, apply relevant scientific principles, and identify potential impacts on people and the environment. They test and evaluate design solutions and solve problems related to energy, genetics and heredity, and Earth’s systems.
Seventh Grade
Science instruction in the seventh grade continues to explore Design Thinking through hands-on labs and engineering challenges. Building on core concepts, students investigate scientific questions around matter and its interactions, photosynthesis, ecosystems and biodiversity, and earth science and renewable resources.
Eighth Grade
Students continue to engage in scientific inquiry through the use of labs and design challenges. Eighth grade scientists solve problems pertaining to force and motion, energy, waves, mutation, selection and adaptation, evidence of evolution, and the solar system.
Social Studies
The social studies program is designed to prepare students to enter a rigorous high school level curriculum, including AP and IB courses. Our middle schoolers engage with a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, DBQ (Document Based Question) analysis essays, and hands-on, immersive learning experiences that develop their skills as historians and engaged global citizens.
Sixth Grade
Students learn foundational history skills in source analysis, chronology, tracking historical perspectives and writing historical claims. They follow the arc of civilizational change, unpacking the geography, religion, achievements, politics, economics, and social structures that define civilizations, including our own.
Seventh Grade
Students move into religions and medieval periods in various cultures, including Medieval Japan and Medieval China. From Greece and Rome, polytheism to monotheism, and a dive into Abrahamic religions, they explore the power of ritual and worship, and the social science implications of religion in society.
Eighth Grade
Students learn the fundamentals of American history, including how the challenges of inequality and injustice came to be, empowering them as change makers. The study of civic values, electoral and governmental structures, American protest movements, and the philosophical foundations of democracy support a student-led civics project, where they design and execute a solution to help address an issue in their community.
Specialist Classes
Specialist classes are part of the daily schedule for all middle school students, including art, music, drama, physical education, and Latin. Our rich specialist program ensures a well-rounded daily experience for all students.
Program Enhancements
Advisory Program: The Art of Living
Our Advisory program focuses on relationship-building, restorative justice, and advocacy for self and others. Through collaborative activities, discussion, and reflection, diverse students connect to their school community and build skills to help them bridge differences and reduce bias. They explore dynamics of identity, body image, social pressure, digital citizenship and more, gaining perspective and tools to address the challenges of early adolescents. The program examines social and psychological dynamics that tend to push us apart, and identifies changes that can pull us together. Meetings with advisors help students navigate the inevitable challenges of middle school.
Academy
Academy is a weekly class that is customized by the middle school learning specialist in collaboration with core subject teachers. Depending on the current needs of the class, Academy may feature a combination of mini-lessons in executive function topics, time for organization, and/or targeted academic support.
Rotations
For their quarterly Rotations, students participate in two of the following specialist classes on Friday afternoons: Public Speaking, Yearbook and Journalism, Wild Ways, Drama, Service Learning, Wood Shop, Intercession, and Puberty Education.
