As students enter fifth grade, they are ready for new educational, physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. The Middle School at St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic School provides them with educational and extracurricular opportunities that awaken their minds and bodies and fulfill their needs for new learning experiences.
Middle School helps students grow and develop into responsible and inquisitive adolescents while preparing them for the academic and social rigors of high school. It is a three-year journey during which students begin to define their sense of self. They begin to identify their interests and talents in particular disciplines while developing their leadership skills.
While they are testing their new-found maturity, students can take comfort in knowing they are at home in a place that provides them with love and security, a place where they will experience an atmosphere of mutual respect, support, and affirmation.
Interdisciplinary units are used to enhance the learning process. For example, an Egyptian unit in sixth grade is taught simultaneously in language arts and history classes.
In the religion program, retreats are incorporated into the curriculum at all grade levels.
In Middle School, the core subjects of religion, math, language arts, social studies, and science are enhanced by several programs designed to specifically meet the educational and developmental needs of adolescents and to provide a solid foundation for high school courses.
The Middle School Honors Program offers advanced students the opportunity to take accelerated classes in math and language arts. Students enrolled in these courses often test out of Algebra I and English I at their high schools.
To prepare students for the research and writing they will be required to undertake in high school and beyond, the language arts program introduces the processes necessary to complete a full research paper.