Grades 5-8

Middle school at FSP is a time of growth, connection and joy.  The fifth-eighth grade program is developmentally aligned and intentionally designed to foster young adolescents’ need for relatedness, autonomy, competence, and fun.  Small class sizes, engaged learning, and daily advisory meetings create structure for students to find themselves and their passions, build close relationships with peers and teachers, and stretch themselves intellectually.

Students experience academic rigor as depth rather than quantity.  The focus is on abstract reasoning, deep thinking, and clear communication: generating questions and claims, reasoning from evidence, and revising ideas in the face of new understanding are practiced in each discipline.  Throughout the curriculum, students ask and discuss questions around justice, fairness, peace, stewardship, truth, conflict, identity, and equity

Middle school students take seriously their responsibility for setting a tone of curiosity, love, and belonging for the whole school.

Grades 5-6

Year 1: What does it mean to be an American? How do living things thrive in community?

Year 2: What are the factors that lead to change? 

Competent, engaged, and reaching ever wider into the world, 5th and 6th graders continue to develop independence, ownership of their learning, and a sense of self.

In math, students solidify, extend, and put to use their understanding of basic operations, integers, fractions, measurement, and basic geometry.  Sixth graders begin a two-year accelerated math sequence that prepares them for 8th-grade Algebra I. A key emphasis is engaging with complex math problems that call upon mathematical thinking, computation, and flexible problem-solving. Through authentic reading and writing activities, often integrated with social studies or current topics, students hone skills of oral and written communication.  Students write for a variety of purposes and focus on clarity, concession, mechanics, and evidence.  Students read across many genres with a focus on comprehension and analysis. In science, process is emphasized: students work on formulating testable questions, gathering experimental data, and drawing and communicating evidence-based conclusions. 

Students continue their social-emotional learning through daily advisory meetings, embedded activities, and intentional relationship-building.  

Grades 7-8

Year 1: What is truth?

Year 2: What is identity?

In their final stretch, students hone their leadership skills through the Quaker practices of meeting for business, developing shared belief, creating space for caring and creativity, and serving others.  

Students engage deeply in mathematical reasoning through the study of pre-algebra (seventh grade) and Algebra I (eighth grade), analytical reading and writing, independent projects, scientific reasoning,  and intensive study of Spanish. These students engage extensively with the world, its history, and their place in it. Through projects connected to community engagement, they practice advocacy in their communities. Seventh and Eighth graders culminate their FSP experience with several rights of passage: the 7th-8th grade play is an annual tradition enjoyed by the whole community.  Students take a trip in the spring focused on either environmental justice or social justice. Exit projects and exhibitions allow students to demonstrate their learning, growth, and readiness to take the next step in their journeys.