Frank Wright Program

Frank Wright Middle School: Program

Frank Wright Middle School has a departmentalized program for both seventh and eighth grade. Students attend five 50-minute periods and one 105-minute period each school day. Mathematics, science, social studies, physical education, and electives meet daily for one of the 50-minute periods. Language arts classes meet daily for 105 minutes. Students who need intense intervention in language arts – including beginning English speakers and those who are three years or more below grade level in reading – have an additional language arts period, for a total of 155 consecutive minutes of language arts/language development instruction each day.

Sixth grade at Frank Wright is self-contained, with the exception of electives and Physical Education. Sixth-grade students go to physical education and their elective on an every other day basis.

Language arts and mathematics are course specific, not grade-level specific. Students who test into a language arts intervention program are then tested further to determine exact placement in a specific program. Language arts intervention is intense and accelerated. Student progress is monitored closely. As soon as students are able, they are placed in the core. Mathematics course offerings are similar. We offer Mathematics Intervention, Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1A (the first year of a two-year Algebra class) and Algebra. Placement in these courses is similar to that of language arts.

Unless they are in band, seventh-grade students are placed in a four-spoke elective wheel. These students rotate through four separate exploratory electives, which include art, music theory, computers, and AVID skills. Classes rotate approximately every nine weeks so that students get some experience in all elective choices.

Eighth-grade students have a variety of electives to choose from that include: band, computers, computer graphics, art, publications, music appreciation, and AVID. They choose one elective each semester for a total of two for the year. Band, publications, computer graphics and AVID are full-year courses.

Sixth-grade students have grade-level coursework available to them in their core classrooms. In addition, we offer intervention-level courses in mathematics and language arts for any student who needs it. English learners and RSP students receive additional services as appropriate. All sixth-grade students have physical education on an every-other-day basis. This is a grade level-specific class, where interaction is limited to only other sixth grade students. They have full access and use of the facilities and a physical education teacher who creates curriculum only for them.

Sixth graders also go to an elective every other day: art one semester and Computer Basics the other semester. These two specific electives were chosen because they fulfill the need to ensure that all students have at least some basic computer skills, plus both tie well to and support much of the sixth-grade curriculum. This provides numerous opportunities for cross-curricular units and teacher collaboration.

California League of Middle Schools
6615 East Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 120, Long Beach, California 90803
Voice: 562/430-3136 or 800/326-1880 . . . FAX: 562/430-5607. . . E-Mail: info@clms.net