The English Program at the French American School of Silicon Valley follows California Common Core State Standards. The goal of the program in middle school is to continue to build upon the knowledge base of our students while expanding vocabulary through literary studies, informational texts, and providing opportunities for both writing and peer editing. Students will be exposed to a broader base of research for writing and understanding publishing, while also expanding upon their knowledge of collaborative discussions.
English Language Arts
Reading Standards for Literature
- Read and comprehend complex literary and informational text independently and proficiently
- Cite textual evidence to support analysis of text and draw inferences from text
- Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene , or stanza fit into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of theme, setting or plot
- Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics
Reading Standards for Informational Text
- Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through details
- Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings
- Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed
- Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not
Writing Standards
- Write agreements to support claims with clear reasons and evidence
- Support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence, using credible sources and demonstrating an understanding of the topic or text
- Write informative and explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content
- Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences
- Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate
- Write arguments to support claims in analysis of substantive topics or text, using valid reasoning and relevant sufficient evidence
Language Standards
Convention of Standard English
- Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking
- Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
- Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple meaning words and phrases based on grade level reading and content
- Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings
- Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases
Math
Ratios and Proportional Relationships
- Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities
- Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems
- Use ratio reasoning to convert measurement units; manipulate and transform units appropriately when multiplying or dividing quantities
- Compute unit rates associated with ratios of fractions, including ratios of lengths, areas and other quantities measured in like or different units
- Use proportional relationships to solve multistep ratio and percent problems
The Number System
- Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication and division to divide fractions by fractions
- Interpret and compute quotients of fractions, and solve word problems involving division of fractions by fractions
- Compute fluently with multi-digit numbers and find common factors and multiples
- Fluently divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm
- Understand a rational number as a point on the number line
- Understand ordering and absolute value of rational numbers
- Apply and extend previous understandings of addition and subtraction to add and subtract rational numbers; represent addition and subtraction on a horizontal or vertical number line diagram
- Understand that integers can be divided, provided that the divisor is not zero, and every quotient of integers
Expressions and Equations
- Apply and extend previous understandings of arithmetic to algebraic expressions
- Write and evaluate numerical expressions involving whole-number exponents
- Apply the properties of operations to generate equivalent expressions
- Identify when two expressions are equivalent
- Reason about and solve one-variable equations and inequalities
- Represent and analyze quantitative relationships between dependent and independent variables
Geometry
- Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving area, surface area, and volume
- Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems
- Draw polygons in the coordinate plane given coordinates for the vertices; use coordinates to find the length of a side joining points with the same first coordinate or the same second coordinate
- Draw, construct, and describe geometrical figures and describe the relationships between them
- Describe the two-dimensional figures that result from slicing three-dimensional figures, as in plane sections of right rectangular prisms and right rectangular pyramids
- Use facts about supplementary, complementary, vertical, and adjacent angles in a multi-step problem to write and solve simple equations for an unknown angle in a figure
Statistics and Probability
- Develop understanding of statistical variability
- Recognize a statistical question as one that anticipates variability in the data related to the question and accounts for it in the answers
- Understand that a set of data collected to answer a statistical question has a distribution which can be described by its center, spread, and overall shape
- Summarize and describe distributions
Science
Earth Science
- Students expand their knowledge of plate tectonics and earth's structure
- Develop understanding of topography and reshaping by the weathering of rock and soil by the transportation and deposition of sediment
Physical Science
- Recognize that heat moves in a predictable flow from warmer objects to cooler objects until all objects are the same temperature
- Recognize energy can be carried from one place to another by heat flow or by waves
- Students will learn rivers and streams are dynamic systems that erode, transport sediment, change course, and flood their banks in natural and recurring patterns
- Students learn heat energy is also transferred between objects by radiation
- Students recognize heat flows in solids by conduction, which involves no flow of matter, and in fluids by conduction and by convection, which involves flow of matter
- Students understand that when fuel is consumed, most of the energy released becomes heat energy
Life Sciences
- Students gain the knowledge that organisms in ecosystems exchange energy and nutrients among themselves and with the environment
- Students recognize matter is transferred over time from one organism to others in the food web and between organisms and the physical environment
- Students learn different kinds of organisms may play similar ecological roles in similar biomes
- Students understand the number and types of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and on abiotic factors, such as quantities of light and water, a range of temperatures, and soil composition