LANGUAGE ARTS/SOCIAL STUDIES
Mission Statement | Social Studies The Dalton Middle School Social Studies Department nurtures intellectually independent students who will contribute constructively to their school, local, and global communities. Dalton’s Middle School students refine their ability to observe, critique, and evaluate the past and present from multiple perspectives through study, research, written expression, collaborative projects, and class discussions. Students will learn to take intellectual risks, approach conflicts thoughtfully, and develop an active appreciation for the lessons and themes of history in their everyday lives. By challenging students to think across and make connections between different cultures, religions, and historical ideas, we build upon Dalton’s commitment to being a vibrant and diverse community.
4th Grade Language Arts The 4th grade language arts program introduces students to a scholarly approach to literature while continuing to develop their love for reading and writing. Fourth graders are transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. In addition to whole class explorations of a rich array of texts, including classics, historical fiction, poetry, and folk tales, they continue to select and read books of their own choice. The curriculum includes E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, Janae Marks’ From The Desk of Zoe Washington, and other historical fiction texts. Literary analysis is introduced through close reading, annotation, discussion, written responses, and creative projects. A wide variety of writing experiences are provided for fourth graders, including journal writing, letters, emails, blog posts, stories, poems, biographies, and expository pieces all within a writing process environment. Understanding that learning to write well is a lifelong process, students continue to develop their pre-writing, drafting, and copy-editing skills as they work on their writing for different audiences. Vocabulary development, fluency, comprehension strategies, and other reading skills are reinforced as needed. To further hone their writing, students have weekly lessons in spelling and writing skills (e.g. grammar, vocabulary, handwriting, keyboarding, etc).
4th Grade Social Studies The experience of moving from the First Program to the Middle School provides the engaging metaphor of “migration” for the social studies curriculum in the 4th grade: Immigration to the United States. We emphasize the themes of continuity and change and the responsibilities of citizenship in the new land. Essential questions guide our curricular studies: What push and pull factors led people to come to (the) America(s)? Was coming to America a choice? What were their journeys like? What were their arrivals like? What challenges did they face? Were people treated as fully human? How did the injustices they faced inspire social resistance? How did coming to the United States transform immigrants’ lives and shape the racial and cultural landscape of the United States?
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We begin by studying current immigration with our Oral History Project. Students become historians by conducting their own oral history interviews of someone in their lives who has immigrated to the U.S. We then begin to explore historical immigration patterns of European immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, focusing on Ellis Island, followed by a study of Angel Island and Chinese immigration. In the second half of the year, we turn to centuries past and explore the forced arrival of enslaved people from Africa.
5th Language Arts The 5th grade language arts program focuses on the continuous development and integration of writing and reading skills. Class books are selected around the theme of “The Individual within a Community.” They are deeply tied to the interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum, as students explore the ways in which protagonists survive, evaluate, and adapt to their environments. Texts include Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, Lois Lowry’s The Giver and others studied through small book groups. The social studies programming works hand in hand with the literature to emphasize the settlement of the first ancient cities and culture creation. An approach incorporating guided and independent reading—featuring Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of Ancient Egypt—fosters a love of literature and emphasizes comprehension, critical thinking, and interpretative skills. The 5th grade writing program focuses on creating structured paragraphs in expository form. In addition, the program stresses research methods, student conferencing. Creative assignments are part of the 5th grade writing curriculum, including poetry, reflections, and stories. Students begin to offer their own literary analysis and voice their opinions about what they and others have written, a necessary step in the journey to having an individual perspective, developing literary taste, and fostering an independent point of view.
5th Social Studies The 5th grade social studies curriculum guides students to reconstruct the past by examining artifacts and ancient texts and applying critical thinking skills necessary for an ongoing study of history. Students focus on the overarching concepts of geography, city development, kingship, religion, and trade through a year-long study of ancient civilizations from around the world. The students begin the year by questioning the methods historians and archaeologists utilize when drawing conclusions. They then delve into an overview of geography, emphasizing map reading, landform identification, and understanding water systems. The curriculum uses primary sources to introduce the students to the ancient world, and students use secondary sources critically to supplement their comprehension of life 5,000 years ago. Weaving together geographical knowledge, mythology, art, and archaeology, the children discuss, analyze, debate, and learn to form some understanding of ancient cultures and their relevance to today. Throughout the year, an array of experiences enrich the curriculum, including hands-on activities, projects, creative writing, museum trips designed to complement the readings and presentations by experts in their fields.
The Dalton School Middle School Curriculum Guide
