Community Middle School - Subjects

Subjects

There are four academic classes in Community Middle School (math, science, social studies, and integrated reading and language arts) each lasting approximately one hour. Lengths of periods can vary from 40 minutes to 52 minutes. The academic classes are taught by groups of 4 teachers. These teachers and about ninety students make up a team. In each team, there are four (sometimes five) teachers who teach the subjects of IRLA (Integrated Reading and Language Arts), mathematics, science, social studies, and sometimes special services for children. There are also team field trips and team days (often in which students get to watch movies or play games during most of their school day), most of which are not required by the school but are planned and taken by individual teams. In addition to the four basic classes instructed at CMS, there are also three daily classes that last 40 minutes long. These classes are World language classes, A-B day classes (also called electives), and cycle classes.

Seventh graders get to pick one elective, and eighth graders get to pick two electives. In sixth and seventh grade, students have their electives every other day and have physical education in place of the days that do not have electives. Eighth grade students have electives opposite each other in somewhat complicated 2-day schedules.

Cycles are extra curricular classes that each student is assigned to every year. Each cycle is a fraction of the year, and each cycle is a different subject. For example, in the 7th grade each cycle is a marking period, on alternating days, and are either Technology, Health, Music, Computers, Art, or Life Skills. 6th graders have life skills, study hall, health,art, music, and computers. 8th graders have 60 day cycles which consist of Art, Music and Health.