Upper School

List of 6 items.

• English

  Reading and writing are essential skills at school and beyond. Upper School teachers concentrate on making each student an incisive reader and effective writer. In small classroom communities, students become critical thinkers, creative writers, and learn public speaking skills. Students interact with a range of texts, including plays, classic novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs, learning to summarize, predict, respond, and reflect. Writers think deeply and critically about literature on paper, developing both a personal and an academic voice. Students hone key skills necessary for general academic success, including how to take notes, participate in discussions, and how to work from a brainstorm to a draft to a polished piece of writing.

• Math

  With appropriate challenge and support, students in the Upper School grow to appreciate math’s relevance in their world. Students are grouped by ability to fully benefit from each other’s observations and contributions. They work individually, in small groups, and as a whole class, to make connections between the classroom and the real world. Students continue to practice and develop their math skills and engage in a variety of projects ­– writing about their math progress, creating scale drawings of their own homes, gathering and analyzing data, researching the lives and contributions of famous mathematicians – that broaden and deepen their math knowledge.

• Science

  The IDS Upper School Science program cultivates a spirit of inquiry and creativity through hands-on learning, challenging students to investigate and explain the mysteries they find in the world around them. Using lab experiences, projects, technology, and group work, teachers foster conceptual understandings of science. Students practice how to work as collaborative members of a team to research a problem, set up an experiment, construct charts, tables, and graphs, and analyze, conclude and present their results. Students develop confidence working in a laboratory setting, interpreting scientific publications, writing scientifically, and completing comprehensive assessments. Students leave the middle school science program with the eagerness and scientific skills necessary for further study.

• History

  Our Upper School social scientists ask “Why?”, delving far beyond the history and social studies textbooks to explore various cultures and diverse perspectives. Traditional topics, time periods and events from 5000 BC through the late 20th century shape the program in which students experience rather than just record to memory a series of past events. Students employ the whole toolbox of skills of reading, writing, research, oral presentations and projects, using the Internet and digital technology of our time as major resources. We teach students to learn and retain new material through “reading-to-understand” techniques and focus on developing a student’s study and research skills. We build historical models and create artistic representations of subjects to allow for alternative approaches to understanding and enhance learning with field trips and guest speakers.

• Technology

  A fully equipped computer lab and a one-to-one Chromebook program support the integration of technology across the Upper School curriculum when it is appropriate to do so. Classrooms are outfitted with projectors and interactive boards and students have access to digital cameras, printers, and scanners. 

  
  

  Students learn to apply technology skills responsibly in complex problem-solving and productive research across the content areas. They learn how to analyze, organize, and synthesize the information they find and how to communicate it effectively through written, visual, oral, and multimedia projects. Hand in hand with digital literacy skills, students practice collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity to become effective and responsible digital citizens. All Upper School students are proficient in the use of Google Classroom.

  
  

  In addition to integrated technology, all Upper School students work in the Innovation Lab and learn about digital citizenship and literacy and use creative software in graphic design, audio/visual, and presentation software, to produce high-quality content. This class makes frequent use of our Design Thinking methodology to solve problems posed in online environments.

• World Language

  The world language study at IDS provides students with the opportunity to attain a higher level of understanding of the structures of language through a focus on Spanish. It strives to develop a student’s ability to communicate by every means—speaking, writing, reading, and listening and also heighten an appreciation and perspective of people and cultures throughout the world. Our students absorb a new language through all the senses, to make it a living, breathing part of their own lives.