Inside the Middle School: Learning in Blocks
Sep 11, 2026
Four weeks into the school year, our Middle School students are already deep into geology, Indigenous history, and the forces that have shaped revolutions around the world. As they prepare to complete their first blocks of the year, we wanted to share a glimpse into what they’ve been exploring.
What Is Block Learning in Middle School?
A good portion of our core curriculum is organized in “blocks,” four-week periods when the class dives deeply into a subject, creating opportunities for integrated learning through art, hands-on projects, and individualized topics. Language arts, social studies, history, geography, and science are taught through the block system. Alongside these blocks, students have ongoing “track classes” throughout the year, including mathematics, language arts, world language, and craftwork. Last week in Morning Circle, teachers and students shared a bit about what they’ve been learning. In case you’re curious, here are brief descriptions of the Middle School blocks unfolding during these first four weeks of school.
How Do Middle Schoolers Learn Science at The New Village School?
The 6th graders have made their way through a number of topics in their Geology block, including the layers of the Earth and the rock cycle, and are now diving into the theory of plate tectonics. They have been penning short compositions and drawing beautiful illustrations that will come together to make a book, a synthesis of their four weeks together. They have also strongly advocated for an individual rock study project (how great is that?!), so they’re going for it, with inspiration from the idea that “a stone is a story.”
As they explore the world beneath their feet, they are also beginning to engage with some of the larger themes of the 6th grade year: Polarities, Kingdoms & Empires, Factual Evidence/Opinion, and the question, “Can Good Come of Evil?” The teachers encourage students to approach these themes with curiosity, careful observation, and a willingness to wonder about the complexities of the world around them.
How Do Middle Schoolers Learn History at The New Village School?
The 7th graders have been examining North American Indigenous history, tracing Indigenous experiences before and after colonial contact. The conversations have focused on Indigenous land ethics, tribal governance, and ongoing claims to Indigenous sovereignty.
Now, in the final week of the course, students have a firm grasp of early American colonialism and can discuss historical and ongoing efforts to relocate, assimilate, and isolate Indigenous peoples. They can also trace colonialism’s lasting effects on our land and communities.
Students are honing their note-taking, annotation, and critical thinking skills. In class, they dissect primary sources ranging from Columbus’s ship diary to speeches delivered by Indigenous leaders in the 1600s. On Friday, students held a Socratic Seminar on Indigenous leadership in the removal of dams along the Klamath River. Their essays and creative pieces reveal careful attention and genuine presence in class.
The goal of this block is to tell the story of how our country was founded and what was erased through colonialism. Students are beginning to understand that learning Indigenous history means relearning what has been lost, and considering how it can be recovered.
The 8th graders have begun their year with a study of “The Age of Revolution,” beginning with the Industrial Revolution, as the impacts of industrialization factored into the three other revolutions they studied: the French, Haitian, and Russian Revolutions.
They learned about the creation of the Spinning Jenny, the Steam Engine, and the Cotton Gin, as well as the biographies of their inventors. They read firsthand accounts from the Sadler Report on the issue of child labor, and students learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City.
They then moved into the French Revolution, where students learned about the monarchy, the Jacobins, and Napoleon Bonaparte. They debated Robespierre’s argument in his “Virtue and Terror” speech and studied the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
During their study of the Haitian Revolution, students compared and contrasted the French document with the Haitian Declaration of Independence. They’re just about to complete their work on the Russian Revolution, which began with an introduction to Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto, primary source documents illustrating the hardships peasants faced prior to the Revolution, and biographies of the Romanov Tsars. They’ll wrap up with a biography of Vladimir Lenin.
Students will spend the last two days comparing and contrasting the four revolutions, their causes, differences, similarities, and outcomes. Throughout the block, they have been working with primary sources, biographies, stories, debate, writing, and artistic work, exploring not only the events themselves, but also the forces that inspire people to challenge existing systems and imagine something new.
Their studies connect to some of the larger themes of the 8th grade year: Individuation & Innovation, Revolutions, Collective Learning & the Future, Synthesis, Consensus, & Resolution.
The teachers encourage students to explore these themes with curiosity, contemplation, and reverence, so that they continue to find solidity in who they are and, ultimately, begin to consider the question: What shall I stand for?
As they complete this block, 8th graders will have an opportunity to reflect more deeply on this question as they venture to Headwaters School in Shasta for a four-night stay and a rite-of-passage experience.
It would take quite a while to describe all the wonderful work happening across all of our blocks at school, so we’ll leave it there for now. We hope these glimpses give you a little window into the rich learning happening in our classrooms!