Middle School AIG Programming

AIG students have the opportunity to participate in the MS Curriculum. Most middle schools offer curriculum service as an elective class that can be offered during a semester or all year setting. All AIG Curriculum is thematic based to help build a strong relationship of main ideas. The AIG Curriculum is designed to reach the whole child through all content areas to ensure students approach an idea from multiple perspectives.  

The curriculum is presented on a 3 year rotation.  

Year 1: Conflict

Through examining a variety of conflicts past, present, and potentially future, our goal is for students to gain more understanding of the nature, reasons, and consequences of conflict, and to develop strategies for finding solutions. At the same time we will be exploring the issues of bias and point of view and their role in conflict. How do we recognize bias? Is it possible to eliminate it? Is it possible to make fair decisions or establish the “truth” when all points of view contain some bias?  

During this year, the curriculum provides many possible lessons to choose from where the students will be asked to aim for objectivity as they try to disentangle the conflicts surrounding microscopic organisms and check the water quality of our own Tar River. We will also see conflict as a springboard for creativity in literature and art, exploring, for instance, the lessons about generational conflict in Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Into the Woods, and writing our own fairy tales.  

Year 2: Patterns 

In a sense, the search for knowledge is the search for patterns. After developing some generalizations about patterns, we will work on finding them, evaluating their importance, and using them to predict and even affect the future. These goals will be accomplished through a variety of lessons and topics. We will look for historical patterns by researching themes in modern American history. The question is often asked, “Does history repeat itself?”  and this year, our AIG students will be able to answer that question. We will also look for patterns in science through the study of issues surrounding genetics, cloning, and organ transplants. Many of these scientific advances were predicted long before their occurrence by science fiction. It seems that by observing the patterns present in science fiction, one can predict the future.

Year 3: Change

Through the study of a variety of changes and change-makers in different fields of study, students will learn to detect changes, analyze them by collecting and interpreting data, and recognize cause/effect relationships that will make possible predictions about when and how future changes will occur. Thus students will learn to achieve some measure of control over the changes that can be so unsettling when unexpected. Through the study of people who have made significant changes throughout history, students will appreciate the change-makers’ achievements and, we hope, aspire to become changes-makers themselves.

Over the course of a student's 3 year journey through MS, they will be exposed to all 3 Theme based curricular activities. This curriculum was created by PCS AIG teachers and designed to appeal to the whole child across all academic areas.