Middle School (Grades 7 - 8)

Beginning in Middle School, students transition from MSR's Montessori program to the International Baccalaureate MYP (Grades 6 - 10) program.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a worldwide community of schools, educators, and students with a shared mission to empower students with the values, knowledge, and skills to create a better and more peaceful world.

It aims to provide an education that enables students to make sense of the complexities of the world around them, as well as equipping them with the skills and dispositions needed for taking responsible action for the future. They provide an education that crosses disciplinary, cultural, national and geographical boundaries, and that champions critical engagement, stimulating ideas and meaningful relationships.

IB programmes offer students access to a broad and balanced range of academic studies and learning experiences. They promote conceptual learning, create frameworks within which knowledge can be acquired, and focus on powerful organizing ideas that are relevant across subject areas and that help to integrate learning and add coherence to the curriculum.

The programmes emphasize the importance of making connections, exploring the relationships between academic disciplines, and learning about the world in ways that reach beyond the scope of individual subjects. They also focus on offering students authentic opportunities to connect their learning to the world around them through the focus of international mindedness.

Credit: "What is IB Education?" International Baccalaureate, 2024. 

*The Montessori School of Raleigh is authorized as a Diploma Programme (grades 11 - 12) school. The Montessori School of Raleigh is a candidate school* for the MYP (grades 7- 10). This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. IB World Schools share a common philosophy- a commitment to high-quality, challenging, international education- that we believe is important for our students.

While your student masters all the traditional subjects through our interdisciplinary curriculum at MSR, they also apply their academic learning through real-world projects (by nature interdisciplinary, personal, and interpersonal as life experience teaches us), so that every school day helps them grow their intellect, develop their humanity, and strengthen their sense of autonomy.

Humanities

Math

Science

The Arts
Our Middle School program is constructed to help improve students’ basic art skills in drawing, painting, sculpting, and design. We use a variety of media and techniques to develop students’ creativity and self-expression. Additionally, our students are encouraged to use their critical thinking skills to explore the world of visual language as part of an ongoing conversation about our ever-expanding human experience. Students explore drawing, painting, the Creative Cloud, ceramics, and sculpture. 

Technology
Beginning in Middle School, students take part in a 1:1 laptop program. Students continue to bolster their digital skills in writing, research, communication, and collaboration while also gaining responsible use experience as they continue to manage technology in their lives.

Spanish
Upon completing two years of Middle School Spanish, students will have earned the equivalent of one high school Spanish credit, setting the stage for them to begin their Upper School Spanish education a year ahead of their peers. 

Physical Education and Health
Students participate in physical education twice weekly as part of their regular schedules. Students practice teamwork, good sportsmanship, and physical fitness. And, students have the opportunity to hone their skills by participating in a number of middle-school sports teams.

A robust, age-appropriate health curriculum is presented to students are prepared and knowledgeable of the physical changes of adolescence. 

THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

In Middle School, we give your child the space he needs — literally! Set amidst 40 acres of forest, streams, and wildlife, MSR’s Brier Creek Campus provides the ideal environment for students at this age. Our natural surroundings provide expansive space for experiential learning and quiet reflections as your student performs scientific field studies, raises his environmental awareness, or participates in community service.

Classrooms are arranged to support the natural flow of focused learning and lively discussion while the refectory, kitchen, labs, and other collaborative spaces make room for community governance gatherings and large projects that extend beyond the walls of the classroom.

In Middle School, your student participates in managing and maintaining their learning environment as a whole. Students help clean the common room, load the dishwasher, organize and tidy after every exuberant learning session. Together with classmates, each student is learning how to achieve the order that makes for a harmonious living and working environment. And this skill, as any parent or teacher   can attest, goes a long way toward success in life.

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

Your middle schooler doesn’t just need physical space, they needs a social space that allows plenty of room to express themselves, makes it safe to ask hard questions about who they are or how something works, and provides opportunities to practice healthy collaboration with lots of different kinds of people.

At MSR, we strive to balance the variety, diversity, and opportunities that come with greater numbers in group work, with the mentorship, free space, tailored-learning, and personal connections that only smaller class sizes can ensure. A well-balanced cohort also means your student develops the capacity to appreciate and collaborate with different kinds of people, since it precludes the development of look-, act-, and think-alike cliques so common in larger school environments. Here, your student develops close relationships with an incredibly diverse group of peers.

We also strengthen our social environment through regular, structured, student-led gatherings. Your student participates in regular Community Meetings, a collaborative forum where everyone takes an active role. Students also attend weekly advisory meetings with a small group of six to eight peers and their advisory teacher.

Student advisors act as an anchor for the duration of a student's middle school experience, providing emotional support, academic guidance, and facilitating of group fun. Within this smaller group, the advisory teacher creates a safe space for facilitated discussion about issues ranging from online safety and integrity, to personal identity and expression, to time management and organization.

In other words, your middle school student is surrounded by a community of adults and peers that meets each student's need for belonging, inspires them toward ever greater independence and personal discovery, and supports them as they navigate relationships and growing academic responsibilities.

THE INTANGIBLE ENVIRONMENT

Perhaps the most vital aspect of our learning environment, palpable the moment you arrive on campus, might also be the most difficult to describe. It’s not something you can easily point to: a place, a program, a policy. Rather, it’s a mindset — a community-wide belief in the capacity of our students to set and achieve their own goals; seek out big, meaningful challenges; both fail and succeed spectacularly and safely; and thus learn lessons so deeply that they inform their lives forever.

A student may not know how yet, but they know from experience that they're capable of learning how to do anything, that with hard work and persistence no problem is too big to take on, and that grappling with complex, interesting problems is part of what brings joy and meaning to work and life.

Visit our Brier Creek campus and you might see a group of students energetically planning an educational excursion to Prague (researching, budgeting, mapping, and scheduling the trip entirely on their own) or working together in the field, collecting data on habitat conditions for the Eastern Blue Bird.

Where are their teachers? Not standing before them, telling them what to do next. Instead, they’re actively engaged beside them, providing the tools, strategies, and support they need to structure and direct their own learning. Your student’s English teacher gives him a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and says, “I think you’ll really love this, and it might give you some good ideas for your Prague trip itinerary. Let’s talk after you’ve read it.” And his Humanities teacher, seeing the book they're reading, suggests that they think about how it fits into the different eras in the city’s history — Holy Roman Empire to Soviet Union to the rise of nationalism and the modern Czech Republic. And asks, “Why do you think it’s originally written in German?”

Meanwhile, your student’s algebra teacher, who knows that a student's working on a project to build new birdhouses for the Eastern Blue Bird trail on campus, introduces new math concepts through a series of scenarios that help the students calculate the loss of habitat, the number of birdhouses needed to have an impact on the bird population, the ideal locations, heights, and distances between them, and so on.

"Student-directed learning” is the belief that your student is an interpreter, constructor, and creator of knowledge, not merely a recipient. And the most memorable and meaningful learning happens when your student (and their questions, interests, and experiences) are at the center of a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum. This kind of teaching requires the most masterful, most prepared, most actively engaged teachers.

MSR’s expert teachers plan lessons that implicitly demand students acquire and apply the necessary knowledge and skillsets at every level, and then supportively challenge your student toward deeper inquiry, genuine engagement, and constant skill-building.

Even as this approach builds adult-like independence in our middle schoolers, it also keeps alight the child-like imagination and wonder-filled energy of childhood, ensuring that your student learns to fuel (rather than replace) their personal fascinations with ever more focused, vigorous, and disciplined study.

In addition to serving within our school community, students complete 25 hours of service each year, a requirement more typical of a high school program. (MSR implements a gradually increasing requirement through Upper School.) This work doesn’t merely signal the high value MSR places on service to the community, it plays a valuable role in your student’s budding sense of self at this age; a sense of responsibility, generosity, and empathy.

Students volunteer in structured ways — feeding the hungry at a local soup kitchen, helping beautify local parks and playgrounds, visiting local retirement communities to share good company and cheer with the elderly, and more. And through these acts of service, MSR helps to forge new connections between our students' unfolding talents and interests and their maturing self and social consciousness. 

Exploration Week is a MSR signature program giving students a week off from traditional academics to explore in depth a topic that may not be found in traditional curriculum. Traditionally the week prior to Thanksgiving Break, these experiences are often core memories for students and provide a springboard for learning about new topics outside of the classroom.

Past year's Exploration groups have focused on are Technology & Engineering, Careers in Sports, Farm to Table, and Creative Exploration. 

Land and Livestock is an experiential program designed to not only cultivate the earth, but cultivate students' appreciation and understanding of the natural world and guide them in becoming stewards of the environment.

Through hands-on activities and student-led initiatives, Land and Livestock engages students in the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of herbs, vegetables, berries, and eggs from its on-campus gardens and chicken coop. The program also teaches students about healthy eating and cooking. During seasons of harvest, students plan and prepare dishes from the garden. They gain cooking skills and create food challenges and tasting competitions to test their knowledge of the herbs and vegetables they have grown from seed. 

A major part of being a globally-minded community is to ensure students are provided the opportunity to go into the world and explore new environments and cultures. 

Middle School day, overnight, and international trips are planned each year and are aligned with the International Baccalaureate approach to focus on global engagement and meaningful community service.

AT MSR, WE TAKE A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH. MSR assesses student growth regularly using a variety of tools such as portfolios, student records, observations, scope and sequence charts, and standardized testing. Multiple sources and multiple methods of assessment help us understand and represent the whole child.

We incorporate developmentally appropriate and curriculum-aligned testing and assessment. MSR follows an evidence-based process of administering certain standardized tests three times a year to see how students' skills develop over the year, allowing us to provide even more targeted support mid-year. We also use these practices to identify students who may need additional support. This includes both academic and social-emotional assessments, with occasional opportunities for no-cost physical health screenings (i.e., speech, language,  hearing, and vision).

As a Montessori and IB World School, we use both qualitative and quantitative assessment. Formal, standardized testing begins in our Elementary Program. Student performance is aligned with a score to inform instruction and improve learning. Beginning in Middle School, performance is summarized by letter grades. Ultimately, data informs our practice and school improvement, which contributes to the academic growth and excellence expected of our students.

From the very start, children practice directing and evaluating their own learning. By the time they reach college, MSR graduates are comfortable with meeting performance requirements measured by tests and grades, but they’re not motivated by these external markers. They’re driven by a self-sustaining desire to learn.

*For required standardized testing, MSR administers the Educational Records Bureau’s Comprehensive Testing Program to all students in grades 3 through 9 in the fall. The ERB-CTP is the primary yearly assessment that independent schools adopt. The scores provide information about what our students know related to reading, writing, math, reasoning, and science.

Students complete tests within their classrooms by their teachers on grade level content. The testing window lasts one week, and the results are used as a data point for school performance, teacher development, and to understand what student know and what they need to work on. Families also receive copies of their child’s scores. Often, families unfamiliar to standardized assessments may need support interpreting the results. Our educators are available to help communicate the results and what they mean for your child.  

Please note that MSR is aware of twice exceptional learners, and we offer accommodations to those with relevant and timely evaluation results from an expert in the field. These reports must be on file, at least two weeks prior to any test administration.