Middle School

Double Language Arts

All students in grade 6 take Language Arts every day. This is the second year of implementation and students have improved vastly in their reading and writing skills. In our double Language Arts courses, teachers have time to focus on all aspects of language arts including reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary development, and grammar.

Constructivist Learning

At ASK, we believe students must construct their own meaning to gain true understanding. We design units using the Understanding by Design template, which categorizes learning into three divisions: acquisition, meaning-making, and transfer. We design authentic assessment tasks to allow students to actually “do” the subject and experience what scientists, mathematicians and artists do in the real world.

Writing with 6+1

We believe that writing skills are best developed across contents. Therefore, we write in all of our courses. Writing across the curriculum must be natural, so teachers design writing activities focused to enhance student skills in each particular content. All teachers use a common rubric, the 6+1 Traits of Writing to assess student work as we help students understand how to develop and refine their writing.

Honors Courses

In the ASK Middle School, we offer our students high school level courses through our Honors English 8 and Algebra 8 classes. These classes are extremely rigorous and prepare the students for further studies in AP and Honors classes in the high school.

Communication

We know how important it is for you to be informed about school events and your child’s progress. All MS students receive an agenda book in September containing a weekly and monthly calendar of events as well as a place for teachers to communicate with parents. Also, each grade level has bi-monthly newsletters, and blogs that are updated daily. Click here for the MS Office Blog.

Middle School Overview

Think critically, act with integrity, strive for excellence.” Our mission statement at ASK sets a high standard for students and teachers. It is a statement that defines our beliefs about the kind of people we are and want to become at ASK.

Within that framework, in the middle school at American School of Kuwait we seek to develop responsible, productive, and highly effective individuals who demonstrate life- long learning skills, embrace cultural diversity, show respect for self and the rights of others, work cooperatively, and practice good citizenship. Furthermore, communication between students, teachers and parents is something we believe is very important as we strive to build a community of learners with common goals and objectives.

The program of studies in Middle School includes the core curriculum: Language Arts, Science, Mathematics, Social Studies, Arabic (or AFL) and Physical Education. Muslim students are required to take Religion. The program offers a rich variety of elective, exploratory and language offerings specifically designed for middle school learners. We provide Resource and ELL services to enable students to be successful in the middle school, and we also offer enriched courses in grade 8 in Honors English and Algebra I.

ASK Middle School goals:

• Strive for excellence by providing a rigorous program of studies that enables students to go beyond basic content and skills and reach higher levels of critical thinking and analysis;

• value each individual by encouraging the acceptance of diversity in our international community;

• develop positive self-esteem in each student;

• offer a challenging and appropriate program of studies that emphasizes life-long learning skills;

• foster a sense of individual responsibility and citizenship;

• engage students in active learning through a wide variety of experiences and authentic learning;

• provide students with a variety of assessments that enable them to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in multiple ways ; and

• enable students to see the connections among various fields of knowledge.