Encore/Electives

The Association for Middle Level Education notes that exploratory courses are a key component of successful middle schools, offering regularly scheduled, short-term enrichment experiences in which students can investigate chosen areas of knowledge and interest. Nipher and North Kirkwood Middle Schools each offer students a number of encore/elective classes, as extensions of other curricular areas and/or as opportunities to explore new areas of interest. Courses range from several weeks to a full year, depending on the grade level, school, and purpose of the course.

English Language Arts

Seventh Grade English Languages Arts offers a wide variety of units that focus on examining society and how it influences who we are as individuals. The units of study for the school year include but are not limited to poetry and creative writing, dystopian literature, memoir and storytelling, and propaganda and persuasion with an emphasis on student selected texts.

Health

Library Media

Library skills at the middle school build upon information literacy skills from the elementary level but begin to go beyond locating and noticing to seeking and creating. Library skills are not taught in isolation but rather integrated throughout all of the subject areas and courses students take throughout middle school.

Life Science

In the first unit of Life Science in Seventh Grade, students will work toward formulating an answer to the question, “How can one explain the ways cells contribute to the function of living organisms?” and “How humans impact the growth and development of organisms and organization for matter and energy flow in organisms?” In unit two students will work toward formulating an answer to the question, “How does a system of living and non-living things operate to meet the needs of the organisms in an ecosystem?” and “How humans impact interdependent relationships in ecosystems, cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems, and ecosystem dynamics, functioning, and resilience?” In unit three, students will work toward formulating an answer to the question, “How do living organisms pass traits from one generation to the next?” and ​”How humans impact inheritance of traits and variation of traits?”

Math 7

In this course, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) developing understanding of and applying proportional relationships; (2) developing understanding of operations with rational numbers and working with expressions and linear equations; (3) solving problems involving scale drawings and informal geometric constructions, and working with two- and three-dimensional shapes to solve problems involving area, surface area, and volume; and (4) drawing inferences about populations based on samples. Students engage with relevant mathematical contexts to make math meaningful. As students encounter challenging problems, and practice asking for help and a willingness to learn from others, they build the social emotional learning competencies of self-management, self awareness, relationship skills, and social awareness.

Physical Education

Social Studies: US History to 1877

Students will study the history of the United States from early settlements in North America through the American Civil War/Reconstruction. Our goal is to foster the development of “historical understanding” in our students by offering them opportunities to engage with history. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, students will learn to ask good questions about the past, make connections between a variety of sources of information, and recognize and consider alternate points of view and purpose, infer meaning as to how social context shapes events as well as ways in which our history is relevant today.