School : St. Andrew's-Sewanee School- Middle School

Country :

State/City : Tennessee

Average Tuition : $35000 USD

Average Living Cost : $10000 USD

Average Housing Cost : $15000 USD

Education Level : K7-12

GPA :

Age : 13~15

Additional :

St. Andrew's-Sewanee School is committed to providing students with the fundamentals necessary for lifelong success. Students are taught to take increasing responsibility for their own learning and to meet academic challenges via multidisciplinary and hands-on teaching styles. Class size ranges from 8 to 18, and the student-faculty ratio is 7:1. Students gain a level of self-reliance that gives them the confidence to care for others and their environment. We prepare students for the demands of college and life through a rigorous academic program that focuses on critical thinking and advanced writing. Believing in the value of a core curriculum, our curriculum emphasizes English, history, mathematics, science, foreign language, and the arts. Classes are focused on active learning with teachers facilitating as students seek answers to complex questions. Our block scheduling means that classes are long enough for meaningful learning. In 90 minutes, students can trek into the woods to monitor pond life, perform a play or have a full debate.

Named one of the eight most beautiful high school's in the South by Southern Living magazine, SAS is truly in a class by itself. The beauty and majesty of our campus and the mountain it sits upon cannot be captured in photos. Take the Virtual Tour and then come see the real thing. The Mountain (as we call it) is a sheltered, serene haven set on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau between Nashville and Chattanooga. Our school's 550-acre campus includes fields, forests, bluffs, and waterfalls. The Spanish colonial architecture gives you a feeling that you've slipped away to another world.

Middle School:

Middle School Course Descriptions

Adventure Education

Adventure Education is an opportunity for Middle School students to learn to safely explore and enjoy our natural world. The school's 550-acre campus is the setting for most of our activities which include hiking, games, construction projects, map reading, orienteering, farming, and more. Students use their imaginations and hone their sense of adventure as we work on team building, communication conflict resolution, and problem solving skills. As the students progress through Middle School, they progress from exploratory activities to more advanced wilderness and farming skills.

Arts

Music

Middle School music classes introduce students to sight singing, rhythms, vocal production, ensemble performance, music theory, and history. Students learn key signatures, time signatures, and an in depth musical vocabulary. Sixth graders learn to sing in two part harmony. By the 8th grade three-part harmonies and change bells are introduced. Emphasis is placed on exposing the student to a variety of music and encouraging an appreciation of all styles of music.

Theatre Arts

Middle School theatre introduces students to the exciting world of the stage. By using improvisation, collaboration, theatre games, and other fun activities, they learn to perform and to support others while they are performing.

Visual Arts

Learning self-expression through the visual arts is an important part of the curriculum at SAS. The middle school art courses allow students to experiment with a variety of media including drawing, painting, printing, photography, digital design, architecture, sculpture, and clay. Teachers emphasize the correlation between the creative process and the student’s final art piece. In 6th grade, students explore our campus as studio and place-based art. In 7th grade, students enter into a dialogue about their art, the art of others, and the role of design in our contemporary culture and in history. In 8th grade, students further their understanding of the relationship between form and design through two distinct semester-long courses: 2-D design and Clay. Most middle school art courses incorporate a service component which provides students experiences that connect their art with the wider community.

Humanities

The Humanities courses are writing intensive at each grade level, building sequentially on reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through the exploration of literature and the study of ancient civilizations and world and U.S. history. All middle school students read and write in a variety of genres, with writing skills taught through a workshop approach, emphasizing process equally with product. At each grade level, critical thinking skills and cooperative learning are central.

Innovation

Technology classes in grades 6 and 7 encourage students to understand both the personal and worldly uses of technology, encourage them to be safe and responsible computer and Internet users, and unleash the creative potential of computers, imaging, and programming. IDE8, gives 8th graders the opportunity to pursue yearlong independent research and creative projects with the gentle guidance of faculty members.

Language

Students in the 6th grade take a trimester each of Latin, Spanish, and Chinese as an introduction to the study of foreign languages and cultures. Beginning in seventh grade, students choose between Chinese, Latin, and Spanish as their primary course of language study and commit to two years of the same language (7th and 8th grade). The middle school years are an excellent time to introduce a second language to young people and SAS is committed to making language available to students in the middle school in a way that is both meaningful and fun.

Math

The Middle School math curriculum is designed to strengthen students basic math skills in preparation for higher level math courses. In addition to focusing on content, the preparation includes helping students to overcome any pre-existing math phobias and to see the real-life value and fun of math. The emphasis is jointly on learning how to “do" math and striving to understand why it's done that way.

Science

The SAS Middle School students assume the role of scientists as they explore the life, physical, and earth sciences and their interconnections. The entire campus is their laboratory as they pursue many hands-on lab and outdoor projects, culminating in an independent research project. Students learn accurate data recording procedures by maintaining detailed lab notebooks, learning to write formal lab reports by the end of 8th grade science. Students are challenged to look for the “why" behind the facts and gain critical thinking skills.

Wellness

The Physical Education course is designed to increase students' stamina, endurance and overall fitness. Students are taught ways to deal positively with their mistakes as well as the mistakes of their classmates. Age-appropriate activities are designed to improve fundamental skills while promoting self-esteem and a sense of well being. Lead up games, hand-eye coordination activities, and the concept of "fierce and friendly" play are emphasized.