St. Paul School teachers create an atmosphere of love, discipline, and support to help students succeed in Junior High. The curriculum emphasizes strong basic skills and advanced learning opportunities. Students develop faith, leadership, and academic skills that build a solid foundation for high school and the future.

Religion

• Focus on the Old Testament stories such as Abraham and Sarah, Exodus, the Kingdom of Israel, the prophets and the period before the coming of Jesus Christ.
• Study the four parts of the Catechism:  Believe, Worship, Live and Pray.
• Demonstrate understanding of Gospels and other Biblical readings through reflections and pray journals.

Literature

• Read, analyze, and evaluate a variety of genres of fiction and nonfiction texts e.g. short stories, historical fiction, plays, and essays.  
• Identify and analyze elements of literature including plot, setting, characterization, conflict, point of view and theme.
• Read novels that include Petey, A Christmas Carol, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and The Egypt Game and respond to literature with a variety of enrichment projects and alternative book reports.
• Understand the author's craft and use of imagery, figurative language, & symbolism in fiction and poetry.
• Summarize, make predictions, compare/contrast, and identify main ideas, across a variety of media.  
• Use context clues and knowledge of Latin and Greek affixes to determine meaning and define grade appropriate vocabulary.
• Identify and discuss Catholic and universal values in literature.

English

• Use the writing process to draft, revise, edit, and publish personal narratives, argumentative essays, original fairy tales, research papers, poetry, and other creative and expository writing compositions.
• Consider the writing traits of content, organization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency to enhance and improve their own writing. Students also work with peers to perfect these traits.
• Master conventions of English grammar and usage in writing and speaking with an emphasis on pronouns and verb usage and agreement.
• Practice and use correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in writing across the curriculum.
• Participate in a variety of large and small group discussions by listening carefully, and asking/answering appropriate questions.
• Present information orally, audibly, and expressively while using visual presentation tools such as Microsoft Powerpoint and Google Slides.

Math

• Students develop and solve equations with real world applications, understand order of operations, operational and relational symbols, and use inverse operations to check.
• They add/subtract/multiply/divide decimals, understand place value, and use decimals to solve story problems.
• They add/subtract/multiply/divide fractions, and compare equivalent fractions.
• Students solve problems involving temperatures, coordinates, number lines, algebra, and statistics. 
• They discover the properties of rational numbers.
• Students read and interpret bar and line graphs, pictographs, and tables.  They solve for the difference between two points, and solve for an unknown point. They create and graph ordered pairs.
• They collect and analyze data, draw conclusions, understand rates, trends, median, mode, range, central tendency and variability.

Science

• Recognize science as a means of gathering information to confirm/challenge their beliefs about the world.
• Use metric measurements for investigation.
• Investigate kinetic and potential energy and demonstrate the transformation of kinetic energy.
• Explore classifications of organisms based on their source of energy and distinguish between ways in which organisms obtain energy.
• Study of the ecosystem includes the interactions of organisms within populations, communities, and ecosystems including examples in the Great Lakes region.  
• Gain a deeper understanding of the Earth through the exploration of the rock cycle, phenomena that shape the Earth and the Earth’s history.  They explore the formation and weathering of rocks and how different soil types are formed.
• Study the movement of lithospheric plates, major geological events and layers of the Earth.
• Gain an understanding that scientific inquiry and reasoning involves observing, questioning, investigating, recording and developing solutions to problems.

Social Studies

• Sixth Grade students learn about North America, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.
• They study eras, periods, calendars and time lines in regards to this area of the world. They compare and contrast several different calendar systems and their cultural significance.
• They study the foundations of geography.
• Students explain the differences between hunter-gatherer societies and pastoral nomads. They learn about the Agricultural Revolution, and agrarian civilizations in Mesoamerica & South America.
• They describe the characteristics of nation-states and how they interact through trade, diplomacy, treaties, humanitarian aid, economic incentives, military force, and threat of force.
• Students study the market economy in terms of limited resources, how individuals/institutions make decisions, the role of incentives, how buyers/sellers interact to create markets, how markets allocate resources, and the economic role of government in a market economy.

Specials

• Sixth Graders attend weekly specials classes including art, music, Spanish, gym and computers.

TAP

• Every other week, Junior High students participate in the Thursday Advisory Program. This program pairs supportive adult role models with small groups of students across the Junior High grades.  The groups explore interests, goals, concerns, and share fun activities.  It is a productive program designed to help students work through the transitions of their early teenage years.  

Alternative Recess Activities

• After lunch, Junior High students can choose from a variety of fun activities such as outdoor recess, band, choir, newspaper, yearbook, yoga, boot camp, crafts, and games.  They can also use the time for homework or to get extra help from teachers.

Extracurricular Activities

• St. Paul School offers a wide variety of activities including forensics, chess, art, altar service, and a full range of CYO sports (soccer, volleyball, cheerleading, cross country, basketball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, tennis, and track).