Why This Class
As a parent, you want your student to be confident they can gain the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish whatever they want in life. This course guides students to level-up their learning abilities in two challenging and rewarding areas of science: chemistry and earth science.

Mentors in this course help students learn what sets Earth apart from other planets in the universe. Through hands-on projects and experiments, students learn to identify the chemical building blocks that make up Earth and distinguish them from substances found on other planets. The course wraps up with a project where students collect and organize scientific data and share it with professional scientists to expand humanity’s knowledge of the world.

As a result of completing this course, students feel an increased appreciation for Earth’s uniqueness and are more ready than ever to tackle new learning adventures in high school and beyond.

Why This Class
This course focuses on one of the coolest scientific topics of all: our planet Earth! Students will learn to connect how atoms and energy interact to create Earth systems, and consequently, the complexities of the Earth around us.

Through hands-on projects, mentors help the students discover how the smallest, most basic particles of matter can combine to create each and every feature of our universe. This course will help students experience the wonder of Earth Science—the ability to observe their physical surroundings, and both observe and connect with them at a much deeper level. Students will also learn about the connections between Earth Science and Chemistry, Engineering, Energy and Biology. They will see models, do presentations and design experiments as they investigate how all of these fields of science relate to each other.

Why This Class
All of the various fields of science are intertwined, and this semester students will get to study how forces and processes such as gravity and osmosis affect our bodies. They will see how our bodies are models of simple machines. They will also look into the future and make predictions about what our machines might look like years from now.

Through debates, projects, in-class discussions, and journal entries students gain confidence in their ability to understand the natural world. They will observe the moon and learn about why it stays in orbit. They will explore our cells and learn how they reproduce as well as the different types of reproduction. Students will study natural selection and analyze data to see the patterns of microevolution. Finally, students will learn about their own bodies and what makes them tick. They will learn about the symbiotic relationships within their own bodies as they compare and contrast the organisms that live in their bodies with their own cells. With the common thread of energy flowing through all these topics, students will walk away better able to identify ways they connect to the natural world, as well as connections between seen and unseen things.

Why This Class
Wouldn’t it be great if your student could study nitty-gritty science and learn about the things that make up our entire world? In this course, students explore the atom. Together with their mentor they will be able to marvel at the simplicity of an atom and all of the complex things atoms create.

In this course, students will observe the interconnectedness of all things on our planet. They will learn about Earth’s systems and what makes them work. They will study ecosystems and observe organisms working together to create the place they call home.

The semester will end by looking at how all of these systems affect humans. Extreme weather can seem mysterious and frightening, especially when you’re young. In the event of a natural disaster, it helps if your student is aware of what’s happening and what they can do in response. Students will leave the course with a deeper understanding of what they can do to study, learn about, and respect the planet.

Why This Class
Your student has a natural fascination with the world, and you want to nurture their curiosity. This course is designed to level-up your student’s sense of wonder at the natural world by taking them on a guided journey through the fundamentals of earth science and physics.

Through projects, in-class experiments, and discussions, students explore the relationship between forces in our universe and the energy flow between living organisms and inanimate objects. Mentors help students trace the flow of energy from the Sun to Earth by investigating food chains, habitats, ecosystems, and biomes. Students also discover how electricity and magnetism work and how we utilize those forces.

By completing the projects in this course students become more intrigued than ever by the interconnectedness of life on Earth and the unseen forces surrounding us. These projects will motivate students to take responsibility as stewards of their planet.

Why This Class
Keeping your student focused in an area like STEM can be a challenge—if they can’t see the fun or personal relevance behind a scientific concept, their attention can easily drift elsewhere. This course focuses on one of the coolest scientific topics of all: our planet Earth! Students will learn to connect how atoms and energy interact to create Earth systems, and consequently, the complexities of the Earth around us.

Through hands-on projects, mentors help the students discover how the smallest, most basic components of our universe can combine to create complexities that are not yet understood. Students will also get a chance to explore the lost language of math, and use the beautiful simplicity of basic mathematical equations to both better understand and describe the world we all live in.

Why This Class
As a parent, you get satisfaction from seeing your student think critically and look beneath the surface of a question to understand the underlying patterns. Through advanced arithmetic and introductory algebra concepts, this course helps your student do just that.

Students in this course solidify their problem-solving skills with negative numbers and basic probability. Mentors also help students explore proportionality and unit rates and how they appear in everyday life (including through questions such as “what is the perfect proportion of milk to a cookie?”). During this course, students begin solving one-step equations with one unknown, creating strong foundations for 8th Grade Math.

By the end of this course, students feel comfortable tackling detailed questions about probability. They are more confident than ever in their ability to learn and use math to solve problems.

Why This Class
Your student inherently knows that learning something is only worthwhile if they can use it in real life. With that in mind, this course focuses on the many ways in which people use math to succeed in their jobs and careers.

Throughout this course, mentors help students level-up their math skills by applying arithmetic to negative numbers (students add, subtract, divide, and use fractions and decimals, all with negative numbers). Mentors also help students prepare for more advanced math courses by solving problems involving surface area and volume and practicing scale drawings.

By completing the projects in this course—including a particularly fun midterm—students continue developing and applying a growth mindset that helps them succeed not only in math but in every area of their studies.

Why This Class
Why are there letters in math? What do the steps of long division mean? Simple though they may sound, these questions can be tricky to explain to your student—and they’re just the tip of the iceberg. This course helps your student find the answers to these and many other “tricky” math questions.

With the help of puzzles from the youth-adventure novel Lauren Ipsum, students in this course take a guided tour of decimals, percentages, long division, expressions, equations, and statistics. Through discussions with mentors and real-life practice scenarios, students learn when to use decimal versus integer arithmetic and begin using statistics to understand and interpret large amounts of data from the world around them.

By the end of this course, students are increasingly conscious of how math impacts their everyday lives. They are excited to use their newfound math skills to continue their learning journey in future math courses.

Why This Class
Math is a unique language—and helping your student learn that language while also connecting it to what they already know can be a challenge. This course tackles that challenge by linking math to scenarios and stories your student knows and loves.

In the Middle School math program, we work with students to solidify foundational skills that will serve them in high school, college and most importantly—in real life. Math is taught in context, so it is relevant and meaningful. We challenge students to move beyond the common idea that only certain types of people can do math by giving them strategies to approach skill-based learning experiences.

By the end of this course, students are increasingly conscious of how math impacts their everyday lives. They are excited to use their newfound math skills to continue their learning journey in future math courses.