The Sixth Grade Early North American Music class is designed to enhance the 6th Grade History curriculum. This course meets once a week for the school year. Students study the music of the indigenous people of North America, early European colonists, people of the African diaspora, and the American Revolution. The goal of this course is to appreciate and understand the historical role music and the people who created it played in the development of the United States.
Early North American Music seeks to sharpen students’ study, organizational, and written skills. Sixth graders read from handouts with historical information about songs and take notes from the whiteboard. Students take open-note quizzes to make certain students are copying down notes correctly and keeping their handouts organized and to help them retain information. Written assignments include writing lyrics such as a parody of “Yankee Doodle" and crafting an original story-song based on a West African form of storytelling.
The Fifth Grade History curriculum is inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. Over the course of the year, students analyze primary and secondary sources to answer the following questions: What does it mean to be human? Why is the world unfair? How can we use stories to improve the way we live?
Students begin the year with the Paleolithic Era to investigate what makes Sapiens different from other species. Then students trace the ways the Neolithic Revolutions transformed human society through the rise of civilizations. Students develop their research skills by investigating their choice of an ancient civilization, including that society’s geography, government, religion, economy, and social structure. In the spring, students examine to what extent the growth of empires, the creation of money, and the spread of religions have unified human culture. Students have multiple opportunities every week to read and annotate, engage in discussions, and practice writing strong sentences and/or paragraphs.
The Sixth Grade History curriculum covers American history from pre-Columbian civilizations through the American Revolution. The course examines the dynamics behind the exploration and colonization of the Americas, and why and how English settlement in North America eventually led to a fight for independence and a new form of government with the creation of the United States. Students develop their research and organizational skills through the completion of three major research projects throughout the year. Two of these culminate in a formal essay and class presentation: the first, in the fall, on an individual explorer who traveled to the Americas and the second, in the spring, on an early settlement in the Americas. Both essays require students to use a variety of sources to develop and prove a coherent thesis statement. The student with the best essay as judged anonymously by a panel of History and English teachers wins the E. Allison Grant Memorial Essay Prize at graduation. For the final research project, students work in groups to teach their classmates about a topic relating to the American Revolution.
The Seventh Grade U. S. History course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the history of the United States from the early republic to the end of the nineteenth century. The curriculum relates themes and events covered over the course of the year to similar situations unfolding today, encouraging students to consider how examining the experiences of those who have lived before them can better prepare them to understand and respond to the challenges of our own time. Students also engage with current events by taking weekly news quizzes from the headlines of the BBC News website and discussing the major stories in class. The seventh grade course also requires students to think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of the primary and secondary sources they use to learn about the past. Seventh grade history students complete two research projects over the course of the year. In the spring for their final project, students develop an individual research question based on a topic of their choosing from the course. From there, they answer their question through an independent thesis-driven research essay. The student with the best essay as judged anonymously by a panel of History and English teachers wins the E. Allison Grant Memorial Essay Prize at graduation.
The Eighth Grade History course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the social, political and economic forces that influenced the twentieth century and have helped shape the world in which we live today. The curriculum begins with a discussion of imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century and proceeds into analyses of World War I and the collapse of the tenuous peace brokered between the world wars. The first half of the twentieth century is then revisited as the class studies the modern history of China. The two threads of the course dovetail with an exploration of the Cold War. At this point in the course, students investigate such topics as as the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, partition in the Indian subcontinent, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and present their findings to the class. In addition to building upon their research and organizational skills, the eighth graders also continue to work on their writing by composing a research paper on an aspect of World War II. The eighth grader with the best paper as judged anonymously by a panel of History and English teachers wins the E. Allison Grant Memorial Essay Prize at graduation. Students engage with current events by taking weekly news quizzes from the headlines of the BBC News website and discussing major geopolitical stories in class.
Social Institutions is a cultural geography course with a special focus on current events. It is designed to improve the students writing and reading skills, as well as the study of regions of the world that are not commonly part of the American curriculum. The course begins with a unit on defining what a culture is and what factors influence the shape of the culture. It focuses on how humans experience culture and how they make choices in the context of their specific culture. Students then learn about the geography, history, literature, sociology, music, philosophy and governments of three or four cultures that are particularly relevant to todays international landscape. Students also experience the diet of a culture by going out to lunch or preparing dishes themselves. They read a variety of documents and learn to parse out the most important information. They write essays and take notes. They do projects that encourage them to apply our course of study to a country of their choice. The primary text is World Cultures: A Global Mosaic by Ahmad, Brodsky, Crofts and Ellis published by Prentice Hall.
Grace Church School is a co-educational independent school in downtown Manhattan, New York City providing instruction for over 800 students in junior kindergarten through twelfth grade.
