Bay Farm
Middle School
Spotlight
Dear Middle School Families,

In the coming weeks, we will be highlighting different facets of the curriculum and providing detail on what your students will be covering in Year 1 of their Middle School journey.

This week, we are focusing on the themes of Inquiry and Power, Force, and Structure. Read on to see what topics we will be covering and how each theme will be implemented through Language Arts, History, Science and Math.
INQUIRY
Adolescents seek to find their own place in the order of things by testing and pushing boundaries in attempts to understand, discover, and recreate "natural" order (often asserting that prevailing understandings are outdated/unnecessary/flawed).
LANGUAGE ARTS
Sophie's World,  a core text for Cycle One, encourages adolescents to ask questions and develop inquiring minds in order to better understand our beliefs/understandings about ourselves and the world around us. 
US HISTORY/CIVICS
We'll use Socratic Circles to inquire into the fundamental questions of Political Philosophy and roots of American Government using  We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution  and Primary Source texts.
CHEMISTRY/PHYSICS
We will participate in labs and experiments that apply all the steps of the Scientific Method to inquire into proper record keeping, and trial and error. Students will be encouraged to investigate and conduct research that can lead to appropriate results and conclusions based on the question they want to answer.
MATH
We will use the  Story of Numbers  and study the History of Math to inquire into the philosophers and mathematicians who proved and inspired the methods and equations we use today. 
Power, Force, & Structure
Adolescents are discovering who they are, how they organize themselves and how they relate to the world outside themselves. They connect to knowledge both physically and abstractly to gain an understanding of the forces within nature and the structures they manipulate.
LANGUAGE ARTS
The Girl Who Drank the Moon,  our core text for Cycle Two, explores the limits of power and the structures of society, as well as some of the forces adolescents experience while navigating their lives. 
US HISTORY/CIVICS
We'll study the structure of the US Government, including the powers of each branch and level of government and how that power is checked and balanced by closely reading Founding Documents like  the Constitution  and  Federalist Papers .
CHEMISTRY/PHYSICS
We will study Newton's three laws of motion, including the impact and the changes in power that can occur with different variables of forces and motion. 
MATH
We will be working with and studying a variety of geometric formulas to calculate the area and volume of both two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes and structures. In addition to graphing points on a coordinate plane to help interpret and analyze data.
Built in Enrichment - Preview

We will continue our tradition of the Sailing Program at Duxbury Bay Maritime School. For years now, the Bay Farm Middle School students have visited DBMS weekly for sailing lessons. Bay Farm Students have the opportunity to learn through hands-on experience on the water.
Video from the American Montessori Society - Montessori Secondary Education.
"Montessori Secondary programs, for Middle and High School students ages 12 – 18, integrate rigorous academic studies with purposeful work, preparing teenagers to become contributing adult citizens who are self-confident and possess skills needed to thrive in society."
ICYMI: Q&A with Shop Director, Jenny Sabados.
In case you missed it, check out this Q&A with Jenny Sabados, Director of the Shop via South Shore Macaroni Kid. "Jenny Sabados was recently appointed as the Director of The Shop and we had the chance to ask her a few questions about this new facility and the Middle School Program at Bay Farm." Click here for the full article.