Biblical Studies provides an overview of the covenantal relationship that God has been establishing with all humanity since Creation. The curriculum, a three-year cycle, (1) offers skills in a critical reading of the Old and New Testaments and The Apocrypha; (2) engages the students in themes of the Christian Tradition—the God of grace, God’s Word as authority for Christian living, God’s Son as the Word revealed and as Redeemer, and the empowering of the Holy Spirit; and (3) offers an exploration into the beautiful literary genres of the Bible—historical chronicles, poetry, parable, eschatological and apocalyptic literature. The text for this curriculum is an ecumenical study Bible, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 3rd edition. The course is taught for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.

English is a comprehensive course in literature, writing, grammar, and vocabulary. The Elements of Literature (Holt, Rinehart, Winston) series is a skills-centered approach to classic and contemporary literature which is supplemented with additional novels, plays, and short stories. The Vocabulary Workshop (Sadler-Oxford) series helps students systematically increase their vocabularies while working on grammar, reading comprehension, test-taking skills, and spelling, as well as critical and analytical thinking skills.

Using McGraw-Hill A Nation Grows: Adventures in Time and Place, sixth grade students learn about the United States: its geography and history, including exploration, colonization, independence, and expansion. Additional areas of the curriculum include slavery, Emancipation, the Civil War, Reconstruction, immigration, industry, World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and other historical events up to the present time. Local, state, and national governments and today’s economy are also part of this course of study.

Using McGraw-Hill World: Adventures in Time and Place, seventh grade students develop an understanding of the continuum of history as they study world regions beginning with the Old Stone Age and continuing through the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece, Rome, Arabia, and America. In addition, they learn about these world regions in transition as they study the cultures of Medieval Europe and the cultures and empires of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Eighth grade history is a research-based course in which each student chooses a topic of interest related to the world, U.S., or Georgia history. The student develops a thesis and completes research on this topic which culminates in a multimedia presentation to an audience at the end of the semester. The research is acquired from print and non-print media including the data bases of Georgia Library Online. Students learn specific research skills and presentation formats in both print and technology. McGraw-Hill World: Adventures in Time and Place, Volume 2, serves as a resource for this program of study.

Sixth grade students develop proficiency in conceptual understanding, computational and procedural skills, and problem-solving abilities through continued use of the McGraw-Hill Mathematics program begun in the Lower School. Topics include operations with decimals and fractions; measurement, data, statistics, and graphs; algebra functions and equations; geometry; perimeter, area, and volume; ratio, percents, proportion, and probability.

Holt Middle School Math: Courses 2 (7th) and 3 (8th) serve as an effective guide as students prepare for the transition to more advanced mathematical topics, such as algebra and geometry, while enhancing basic arithmetic knowledge and skill. The emphasis is on developing abstract reasoning and symbolic manipulation skills. All of the instruction in this series reflects current and accurate mathematics. In addition to data, number theory, and algebraic reasoning, students will work with integers and rational numbers as well as operations with rational numbers. Other topics of importance are plane geometry; percents and probability; perimeter, circumference, area, and volume; equations and inequalities; and sequences and functions.

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