Part of a student's education at SSIS Middle School focuses on exploratory programs. Exploratories are courses designed to meet the needs of early adolescents by providing high-interest topics that relate more to students' personal worlds than academic subjects. In grades 6 and 7, in addition to the semester long course of Asian Studies/Information Technology and music there are four rotations of exploratories in a year. Each is 1 quarter long and meets five blocks per week.
In grade 8, students elect semester long exploratory courses. They can take four semester courses, two year long courses or a combination. For example, they can take a semester of Art and a semester of Study Skills and a year of Chorus (two semesters). Similarly, they can take a year of Spanish I, and two different semester courses, such as Dance and Drama. Or they can take four semester courses: Dance, Drama, Art, Study Skills.
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