Middle School
In the 2005-2006 school year HSSIS will have seventh and eighth grades; sixth grade will be added in September 2006.

For the middle school years, there will be significant emphasis placed on helping every student to develop literacy skills, which we view as the lynchpin for high level learning across the curriculum. A Humanities sequence will interweave all aspects of literacy and reading support into a project and problem-based curriculum. Ramp Up will supplement literacy development for struggling students to bring them up to grade level.

Grade level teaming of teachers with common planning time will provide a foundation for interdisciplinary studies of important international themes. For example, under a theme such as Economics and Interdependency, sixth grade social studies, science and English classes might jointly focus on a case study of European colonization in Africa and Asia and its lasting cultural, environmental and economic consequences while eighth graders pursuing the same theme compare resource allocation and development of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Three Gorges Dam. Block scheduling will further provide opportunities for collaborative teaching and learning, for example, by combining science lessons on measurement with math lessons on decimals and fractions.