middle School

Exploration, Transformation, and Joy

Hewitt’s middle school invites girls to embrace early adolescence as a time of exploration, transformation, and joy. Our learning culture is rooted in empathy—the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes—and Hewitt girls cultivate this essential habit of mind as both an intellectual and emotional practice. Middle school girls learn to support each other during a time of significant individual change, and their teachers serve as coaches and mentors in resisting pressures to conform and developing a sense of purpose as they explore who they are as young people.

Dr. Paula CUELLO, HEAD OF MIDDLE SCHOOL

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

Hewitt’s middle school curriculum is designed to cultivate student curiosity and interdisciplinary thinking while also ensuring that girls continue to build a foundation of core content and skills across subject areas. To that end, each grade level has an essential question that is explored in their advisory program, in their courses, and in deep dive “mini-courses” throughout the year. An essential question is broad and open-ended so that students may explore a variety of possible answers while applying their learning to the world around them, past, present, and future. A great essential question naturally leads to other questions and wonders, so that students learn how to think critically and creatively about themselves, their communities, and their world.

Grade 5 Essential Question: What is Civilization?
Grade 6 Essential Question: What is Citizenship?
Grade 7 Essential Question: What is a Game-Changer?
Grade 8 Essential Question: What is an Ethical Leader?

Humanities (Grades 5 and 6)

In grades 5 and 6, students explore the grade’s essential question through the lenses of literature, writing, history, and social studies. Students participate in reading workshops that allow them to continue to advance their reading skills through books that they select with the guidance of their instructor as well as whole-grade reads. In addition, they begin to produce more complex pieces of writing, including analytic essays, research-based pieces, short stories, poetry, and memoir. Grade 5 humanities explores the question of “what is civilization” through the study of the Aztec people and their technological innovations, the residents of the ancient city of Pompei and its archeological site, and women leaders of ancient Egypt. Throughout the year, students consider how the study of ancient and early modern civilizations relate to the world of today. Grade 6 humanities takes a deep dive into the question of “what is citizenship” to frame the study of the history of the United States, from its origins to the civil war, the constitutional convention, and the legislative process today.

English (Grades 7 and 8)

With an appreciation for adolescent girls’ desire to hear many points of view, the middle school English program incorporates a diversity of texts from around the world and from different time periods. Studying multiple genres closely fosters an appreciation for different modes of expression, from poetry to prose to plays. We cover both the canon and the latest young adult literature, and a strong independent reading program celebrates the gift of lifelong leisure reading.

As students move beyond the reading and writing workshop model of fifth and sixth grade humanities into reading circles and shared class texts, the English department introduces them to writing-as-thinking practices. This pedagogy uses a host of freewriting prompts, reading approaches, and visual-to-text exercises to model critical thinking for students and to teach them how to look more deeply at a text or problem. The program incorporates a range of reflective, narrative, and critical analysis writing prompts that model ways to refine their interpretation of a text. Rich reading lists in both seventh and eighth grade provide ample opportunity to consider the grade level’s essential question through the lens of other peoples’ stories and experiences, past and present.

Every girl writes in class each day and has a chance to share her thinking. Girls learn how an understanding of a novel evolves through intentional dialogue and debate with their peers, and their writing reflects the original thinking developed in these classrooms. The writing done in class often feeds into the first drafts of an essay assignment, and girls learn the power of revision through a host of specific strategies that require them to revise deeply rather than superficially. In this way, girls learn not only to develop the skills needed to express their ideas effectively, but also learn first and foremost how to think so that they have ideas worth sharing.

Grammar and vocabulary instruction continue, primarily in the context of student reading and writing, and with an eye toward developing a distinct style and public voice by eighth grade.

Year Long Courses:
English 7: Literature of Identity and Intersectionality: What is a Game-Changer?
English 8: Mortals, Gods, Heroes: Choice and Fate in Ancient Myth

History and Social Sciences (Grades 7 and 8)

At Hewitt, history is an active study, not the passive acquisition and memorization of facts and details from long ago. By incorporating current events and contemporary connections, Hewitt girls learn to appreciate the importance of deep historical understanding as part of decision-making today and in the future.

The middle school history program emphasizes the exploration of primary sources in relation to the narrative arcs of various historical traditions. Core social science skills such as geography, topography, demographics, statistics, and archeology provide girls with an understanding of the wide range of investigations that are crucial to creating a history. Each course focuses on case studies of a particular period so that students achieve considerable depth in their learning, acting as historians who look at archives, maps, newspaper articles, diaries, photographs, archaeological data, and more.

As part of Hewitt’s writing across the curriculum program, history teachers incorporate writing-as-thinking skills as a methodology for teaching students to think like historians. This writing develops into formal analytic and research-based writing, as well as creative writing explorations that allow girls to empathize with those living in another time and place. Public speaking and debate lie at the core of the program, especially in grades 7 and 8, when students study aspects of twentieth-century American history and the democratic model (and its limitations) of Greece. Students learn about the game changers of different civil rights movements in grade 7 and dive into a robust debate about ethical leadership in the democracies and republics of the past and the present in grade 8.

Year-Long Courses:
History 7: Twentieth Century America: Power and Responsibility
History 8: The Ancient World: In and Beyond the Mediterranean Basin

Mathematics

Hewitt’s mathematics department has developed a program rooted in a collaborative, problem-solving approach. While traditional math instruction relies on “I Do, We Do, You Do” steps and features endless memorization and rote exercises, Hewitt girls work independently and as groups each day to explore the conceptual beauty of math, right from the start of kindergarten.

In grades K-5, our math workshop model teaches girls to think both visually and numerically, and the emphasis is on mastering key mathematical concepts as a learner progresses. Middle school builds on this approach by incorporating a problem-solving curriculum developed by our mathematics department. At this point, girls understand that they must do much more than simply memorizing their “math facts.” Middle school mathematicians learn to operate on numbers fluently (the difference between memorizing long lists of vocabulary words in a foreign language and being able to put the words together to form sentences and paragraphs). This approach allows girls to begin to see that math is far more than a set of formulae, as the conceptual scope and sequence follows the metacognitive development of young children. Girls can work at the pace they need depending on the concept, allowing teachers to provide both reinforcement and enrichment in the same classroom.

The joy in Hewitt math classrooms is palpable. Mistakes are not only welcomed, but celebrated and analyzed to determine “which is the best mistake.” By upper middle school, students study math through a series of problem sets, which consist of nonroutine problems. These problems stretch their knowledge, push them to think creatively, encourage collaboration and debate, and teach girls to develop methods they have not yet learned. In this way, mathematical methods and procedures come from the problem-solving process itself and not from the teacher. While this type of discovery often takes longer than simply giving the students the procedure, it is time well spent as the girls’ hard work leads to true conceptual understanding—yielding long-term retention and an increased ability to apply knowledge to novel situations.

Year-Long Courses:
Mathematics 5: Understanding and Manipulating Numbers
Mathematics 6: Number Sense, Patterns, and Reasoning
Mathematics 7: Foundations of Algebraic Thinking
Mathematics 8: Algebra I

Science

Hewitt girls enter middle school classrooms knowing they are scientists. Immersed since lower school in an inquiry-based model of scientific investigation, our girls jump right into the design challenges and tough problems of the curriculum because they see themselves as potential difference-makers in areas of climate change, medical research, and scientific innovation. As part of each grade level’s exploration of its essential question, students learn to see themselves as budding archeologists and climate scientists, engaging in considerations of what it means to be citizen scientists committed to the well-being and sustainability of our communities as well as to ethical decision-making in the sciences.

Our science faculty members act as coaches—guides who model the scientific process of hypothesis, test, result, review, and often new hypothesis. They know the research that shows that girls enter middle school eager to feel engaged in science and other STEM fields. And they know research shows that by age 15, many girls no longer see themselves as adept or interested in these areas. Hewitt middle school faculty members combat this trend in a number of specific ways that are supported by recent studies, including the cultivation of growth mindset, contact with women scientists, and collaborative work environments that embrace failure as key to the scientific process. Girls see that most scientific experiments fail and that such failures are part of a productive process forward. We learn from what does not work as much as from what does work, especially in science.

Year-Long Courses:
Science 5: Earth and Space Science
Science 6: Energy Transfer and Ecological Systems
Science 7: Physics and The Engineering Design Process
Science 8: Atoms, Compounds, and Cells

Educational Technology

Hewitt prepares girls to reverse the current statistics of women in STEM fields. With a one-to-one Chromebook program in middle school, girls use a range of educational apps in many classes, and our technologists often serve as coaches to teachers and students on sophisticated projects related to the course of study in a given subject. For example, as part of their study of the Industrial Revolution, sixth grade history students visit the Innovation Lab to apply their knowledge of basic electrical circuits to making “telegraphs.” Students use their finished products, which span dozens of feet, to communicate messages in Morse code from opposite ends of the hallway. In grade 8 science, students use Scratch, a programming language developed at MIT, to create digital animations of elements on the periodic table. They demonstrate their understanding of electrons, orbital shells, and the nucleus by using sine and cosine programming functions to bring their colorful graphics to life. The confidence cultivated by such varied daily applications leads our girls to want to learn programming and product design. Several of our technologists also have an art background, and girls study graphic design and digital imaging as part of our STEAM program. The scope of the program includes a series of integrated projects in which girls learn programming and design fundamentals in the context of a specific class. By working with such purpose, they master various technologies and experience how technology translates to meet different goals.

In grades 5 and 6, students take an Innovation class—a hands-on experience in foundational woodworking, hand tools, and construction skills. Students learn to plan parts and dimensions with drawings, build prototypes with cardboard, and cut and fasten with wood and other materials to create final products. Students become familiar with safety practices and techniques for using different types of saws, measuring tools, drills, hammers, screw drivers, and other tools. During their two years of Innovation class, students grow increasingly independent and sophisticated in their use of digital fabrication tools, such as 3D printers and laser cutting.

Students continue to develop a wide range of technology skills throughout middle school, including, starting in grade 5, the use of Web 2.0 tools to collaborate and communicate with peers. At each grade, as they grow into more sophisticated users of technology, the girls learn to manage their personal data to ensure digital privacy and to be aware of data-collection technology that may track online navigation choices. Drawing on their study of empathy and purpose, they learn to engage in positive, safe, legal, and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online and when using networked devices. As they are immersed in the cyclical nature of the design process, middle school students develop facility with basic computer programming language and design short computer programs. By seventh grade, our girls employ a variety of media tools to present information; regularly evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility, and relevance of information, media, data, or other resources; and enhance their spatial thinking skills by solving design problems in 3D modeling software and physical materials.

We also teach digital literacies and modes of effective communication, from blog writing to designing a visual brand, each year in middle school. Our highly integrated approach to technology education models for girls the host of possibilities they might pursue as they move into upper school and beyond. In addition, elective courses in robotics allow girls to pursue a year-long challenge as part of the annual Vex Robotics competition program, and our students have competed at both the national and world championship levels.

World Languages and Classics

Hewitt students continue study of either French or Spanish in middle school, with the courses becoming high school level in grade 7. Language classes come alive with dynamic conversations about the everyday lives of students as well as the music, art, and culture of Francophone and Spanish-language communities. We teach classes almost entirely in the target language, so students gain a good ear for the spoken word and grow confident in their own ability to communicate. Grammar and vocabulary instruction occur daily and we expect students to review work at home not only on paper but using apps that allow them to practice listening and speaking.

Our world languages faculty members take advantage of the many neighborhoods in the city that speak French and Spanish, as well as the many cultural institutions that provide educational programming, often in the target language. An optional trip for French speaking students in grades 7 and 8 takes girls to Quebec City each year and another takes Spanish students to Costa Rica. Beginning in grade 7, students add Latin I to their schedule, a half-credit course that covers the first book of the Cambridge Latin series. Grade 8 sees the completion of the Latin I course, and many students continue to take Latin as an elective in the upper school. Through their study of Latin, students explore the relationship of Latin words to English derivatives, patterns of word endings and syntax, and the culture and history preserved in the archaeology of Pompeii.

Year-Long Courses:
French
French 5; French 6; French I (upper school sequence begins); French II

Spanish
Spanish 5; Spanish 6; Spanish I (upper school sequence begins); Spanish II

Latin
Latin 1A; Latin 1B

Visual Arts

Hewitt educates girls to see the world through multiple lenses. Our visual arts program in middle school exposes them to a wide range of media as they work on 2D, 3D, and digital projects. In fifth and sixth grades, students practice handling materials responsibly as they explore the creative process and experiment with mixed media creation. They learn the power of their voice in artistic expression while working on independent and collaborative projects.

In seventh and eighth grades, students take courses that introduce them to the kinds of ceramics, painting and drawing, and graphic and digital design courses they would like to pursue in upper school. Learning to manipulate clay, to sketch from a live model, and to design for the multi-dimensional spaces of online worlds inspires girls to bring their emerging sense of purpose to bear not only on personal expression but also as voices for the community, in politics, and as entrepreneurs. Visual arts courses inspire students to grapple with important questions about themselves and the world using a different lexicon, teaching them new ways to think critically and find voice.

Year-Long Courses:
Visual Art 5: The Creative Process
Visual Art 6: Mixed Media Creation
Visual Art 7: Digital Arts
Visual Art 8: Studio and 3D Art

Performing Arts

With a founding head of school who grew up on the cobbled streets of Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, and whose infectious passion for performance inspired her to establish a school where theater and drama would enhance and enrich the entire curriculum, Hewitt has long celebrated the role of the performing arts. They play a central role in keeping vital traditions alive while also bringing the best research on music, drama, and dance education to bear on the curriculum.

In middle school, we provide students the option to study instrumental music through our handbell choir and string instrumental ensemble, offering students the option of a year-long study of handbells, strings, or vocal choir. In addition, the middle school stages several theatrical productions a year. Our drama program forms an important cog in the wheel of our public speaking program, as girls gain confidence on the stage and learn various modes of speaking and acting.

Dance also provides a resource for our girls in movement and positive body image just as they enter puberty. Middle school dance combines dance foundation, technique, and strengthening with compositional work aimed at expanding creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Music Courses (Year-Long):
5th Grade Choir
6th Grade Choir
7th Grade Choir
8th Grade Choir

5th Grade Handbell Choir
6th Grade Handbell Choir
7th Grade Handbell Choir
8th Grade Handbell Choir

5th Grade Strings
6th Grade Strings
7th Grade Strings
8th Grade Strings

Drama and Dance Courses:
Drama 5: Performance Lab (semester course)
Drama 6: Improvisation (semester course)
Drama 7: Realistic Theater Lab (year-long course)
Drama 8: Adaptation and Greek Theater (year-long elective)

Dance 5: Creativity Lab (semester course)
Dance 6: Beginning Technique and Analysis (semester course)
Dance 7/8: Intermediate Technique and Composition (offered as part of the physical education sequence)

Middle School Theater Productions
Winter: Winter Musical (7th through 12th grades)
Spring: Middle School Play (6th through 8th grades)

Physical Education

In middle school, the physical education curriculum focuses on each student’s continuous development of physical fitness attributes, movement skills, and physical literacy. The program features a strengthening curriculum, with important development standards. The program involves the application of concepts, skills, and strategies to the ability to perform in-class exercises like fitness, group activities, and fundamentals of sports.

We also provide students with opportunities to develop leadership skills and work in small groups to solve problems or accomplish tasks. This fosters diverse capabilities and meets the social needs of individual students. Through purposeful learning activities, students refine motor, social, and intellectual skills while expanding physical knowledge, embracing a fit and active lifestyle.

Public Speaking

Along with their study of drama, middle school girls follow a public speaking track woven into the curriculum. In grade 5, girls present their creative writing as a celebration of authorship at their publishing party. They practice making eye contact, enunciation, pausing for effect, and pacing their reading well.

In sixth grade, girls practice formal debate skills in their humanities classes, which include stating a position clearly and concisely and then responding with a rebuttal. Seventh graders learn how to present a mathematical solution to their peers by working through the steps on the board, making good eye contact, pausing for questions, and summarizing results. As part of their exploration of ethical leadership, grade 8 students have a number of public speaking opportunities, including leading socratic seminars for younger students and performing their creative work in English class. A capstone project also expects girls to present their research and learning.

Service Learning and Community Purpose

In middle school, we incorporate service learning into both the advisory program and the academic program. Students experience a personal sense of purpose and think about what it means to be of service to a community through activities such as Family Service Day, Central Park Clean-up, and service trips. Each grade participates in projects that connect to the curriculum so that students learn that service opportunities arise in all areas of study. For example, in grade 6, girls extend their learning about ecology to hands-on activities that teach environmental stewardship, such as tree planting in the New York watershed. In grade 8, as part of leadership learning, girls participate in activities with older adults at the Carter Burden Center for the Aging. Girls also learn to be of service in the Hewitt student community through our cross-divisional buddies program.

Grade 8 Capstone Project

The capstone project is a culminating cross-curricular project in which eighth graders work in small groups to identify a world problem they are moved by and can take action to address. Before students can bring about change, however, they must conduct extensive research to understand their chosen problem—its causes, both direct and cumulative, as well as its impacts on people and/or the environment. Through the course of their capstone project, students learn what it means to be an ethical leader as they try to understand their chosen problem from multiple perspectives and develop a prototype or action plan to bring about the change they envision. Students have an opportunity to submit their prototype or solution to a STEM challenge competition at the completion of the project.

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