Grades 5/6
"Synapse enables students to have the ability to take a look at a problem, and say, "I'm going to fix this, right now." Synapse Student
Social Studies
Synapse social studies Program Highlights
Inquiry-based creative projects that allow students to draw on personal experiences.
Cross-curricular integration, inspiring connections and student-driven inquiry.
Opportunity to experience various perspectives and understand the driving factors of decisions (e.g. motivations, thoughts, feelings, etc) through simulation.
Exploration of ethical and moral dilemmas.
Explicit active reading strategies with an emphasis on analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as supporting literature for each topic.
Utilizing Synapse’s EQ language and SEL competencies to reflect on and communicate student experiences.
Project Highlight
Power of One Puzzle
Through the Power of One Puzzle: Pieces of the Disability Rights Movement project, students brought together knowledge they had been building throughout the trimester about inclusion, accessibility, and advocacy. Students flexed a variety of different skills -- including researching, planning, organizing their time, and thinking creatively -- to create an essay and visual representation of their topic.
Language Arts
Synapse language arts Program Highlights
Inquiry-based creative projects that allow students to draw on personal experiences.
Cross-curricular integration, inspiring connections and student-driven inquiry.
Opportunity to experience various perspectives and understand the driving factors of decisions (e.g. motivations, thoughts, feelings, etc) through simulation.
Exploration of ethical and moral dilemmas.
Explicit active reading strategies with an emphasis on analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as supporting literature for each topic.
Utilizing Synapse’s EQ language and SEL competencies to reflect on and communicate student experiences.
Project Highlight
Curriculum Topics
Develop language (reading and writing) as a tool to make sense of challenges and effect change. Students focus on:
- Reading and writing a variety of genres, including narrative and expository, letters and epistolary, persuasive, and poetry.
- Active reading strategies including visualization, prediction, questioning, making connections and inferences, and annotating.
- Literary analysis including characterization, point of view, theme, symbolism, conflict, setting, and foreshadowing.
- Writing components including mechanics, organization, and authorial voice.
Literacy Electives
Literacy topics can deep-dive through elective courses that often explore topics outside of the core curriculum. These electives are often student run and a way for students to show their leadership and share their interests:
Examples of literacy electives:
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Voice of Synapse Newsletter
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Creative Writing
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Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi
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Rolling Warrior by Judith Heumann & Kristen Joiner
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Things to Make & Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker
Math
Synapse MATH Program Highlights
Synapse Middle School Math is a community of problem solvers who build joyful connections and practice meaningful skills so that every student can express their unique mathematical voice.
Our philosophy:
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Mistakes are beautiful
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Use the best tool for the job
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Math is about more than just calculation
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Math is a creative endeavor
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Everyone is a “math person”
Middle School Math Program Overview
In the Middle School, Math meets several times a week. Students work through a problem based curriculum that develops standards based skills and mathematical practices.
Low floor, high ceiling mathematical tasks ensure all students are able to find appropriate level of challenge.
Rich investigations, from both applied and pure mathematics, provide students with the opportunity to apply their imagination, creativity, collaboration and experience the thrill of mathematical discovery.
Students develop authentic problem solving skills including learning to pose their own problems, identifying relevant information and making reasonable assumptions and estimation.
Understanding is developed by moving from concrete and visual representations towards more abstract models.
Computational fluency is built through puzzles, games and mathematical investigations that support number sense and deep conceptual understanding while deemphasizing speed and memorization.
Project Highlight
Wings
The Wings project kicked off the 5/6 math curriculum last year! It combined geometry, ratios, proportions, and design thinking into a memorable whole. 5th and 6th grade students approximated the area of different species of birds' wings using polygon formulas, then used that number to find those birds "wing load", a ratio of weight to wing area. They used the wing loads they found to figure out how large a pair of wings would need to be for them to fly.
Curriculum Topics
Students have explored:
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The Mathematics of the Environment: Unit rate, measures of central tendency, fraction operations, converting from fractions to percentage, statistical analysis, geometry
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The Mathematics of Dragons: Graphing on the cartesian plane, ratios, proportional relationships, area modeling
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The Mathematics of Construction: Introduction to algebra, data organization, the number system and operations, unit rates
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Fractions, Decimals, Percentage, Ratios, Probability
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Units of Measurement
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Proportion & Scaling
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Operations w. Rational Numbers
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Introduction to Algebra
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Geometry
Math Electives
Electives
Math topics can deep-dive through elective courses that often explore topics outside of the core curriculum:
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Stock Market Game
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“Math Jam”
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Sports Analytics
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Ancient Number Systems
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Mathematical Art
MATHletics
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Practice for math competitions such as American Mathematical Competition, Bay Area Math Olympiad, MOEMS, and Girl’s Adventures in Math
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Focused on developing problem solving strategies, skills, and love of challenging problems
STEAM
Synapse Science and STEAM Program Highlights
Low floor, high ceiling science projects ensure all students are able to find appropriate level of challenge and opportunities to dive deeper.
Guest experts in the current field of study provide expertise, perspective, and inspiration through virtual interactions, guidance of experiments, and accompaniment on field trips.
Philosophy of the STEAM Program at Synapse
We want students from Synapse:
To have the skills to question what they want, discover what they want and accurately and effectively communicate what they want.
To be confident and competent in their knowledge and skills.
To practice and develop their critical thinking skills.
To be creative in their ideas and in their problem solving.
To be curious about the world.
Electives
In the Middle School, STEAM Electives are offered, reflecting teacher and student passions in niche courses.
- Forensic Science
- Cryptozoology
- Art & Science of Letters
- Biomimicry
- Architecture Exploration
- Wildlife Conservationists
- Fun with Fermentation!
- Women in STEAM
Project Highlight
STEAM Video Project
Students researched an environmental issue such as climate change, habitat loss, sea level rise, and various types of pollution. In small groups, they then created storyboard, wrote scripts, and filmed news segments highlighting their research. A special part of this project was also the incorporation of our Change Maker, Judy Heumann as students researched accessibility in National and State Parks and created commercial breaks to be viewed between news segments.
SEL
Synapse Social-emotional learning Program Highlights
Students in the Middle School dig deeper into social-emotional learning through the following avenues:
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8 Competencies of the EQ Model
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OASIS (Open Agenda Student Initiated Sessions)
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Identities and the power of knowing our own identity and be appreciated for our full identities
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Address current social-emotional issues, digital citizenship, health and wellness
EQ Essentials Questions
How might awareness of our social identities impact a positive learning environment?
How can we create an inclusive school culture that celebrates our social-emotional and academic differences?
How can we use our understanding of the “Choose Yourself” section of our EQ model to be more intentional with our thoughts, feelings, and actions?
How can the practices of pursue noble goal and increase empathy in the real world support our digital interactions so that our online presence is positive and inspiring?
Project Highlight
Friendship Talks
5/6 students start to understand their empathy circles beyond who they know and love.
Curriculum Topics
Students have explored:
- The Big 8 Identifiers
- Understanding ourselves in the digital/global world
- Identifying our impact through understanding our perspectives and choices
- Acting intentionally to affect changes in our spheres of influence
- Perceptions surrounding adolescence
- Debunking common myths or labels associated with being a teenager
Performing Arts
Synapse Performing Arts program highlights
Our Performing Arts program includes all Synapse students, empowering them to express themselves through performance through age appropriate performance experiences. In addition to classes and ensembles, we offer regular informal performance opportunities for students of any level during our all-school assemblies.
The Middle School: Play, Listen, Choose & Innovate
In the Middle School, students begin playing instruments in small ensembles.
Students who study an instrument at home are invited to bring that instrument to school to play as a part of any ensemble. Ensemble curriculum is designed to accommodate and challenge students at every musical level.
Students are challenged in Collaboration, Inspiration, Empathy, Iteration.
Ensembles
- Jazz Band
- World Music
- Middle School Choir (optional)
Performing arts in 5/6
All 5th & 6th Graders: 2 year Rotating Curriculum
American Music: Blues & Jazz
World Music: African & Latin
Visual Arts
Synapse visual arts Program Highlights
In Visual Arts and Design students use the Innovation Model to explore creative connections to academic areas of focus. Students analyze works in historical context, develop an understanding of artistic and design concepts and execute their visions through experimentation with new skills and a variety of media.
5th & 6th grades: Identity & ideology in art
In 5th & 6th grades, students expand on their visual arts skills, with an emphasis on learning the impact of art in culture and creating original independent works.
Experiment with specific media referencing historical art movements to create complex original artworks reflecting personal choices and increased technical skill.
Explore the qualities and actions that make someone an activist or an artist, inspired by the work of conceptual artists such as Ai Wei Wei, Barbara Kruger. Jenny Holzer, Stephanie Syjuco, The Guerrilla Girls, and Shepard Fairey.
Explore how propaganda or advertising is used, by whom, and whether it is effective at achieving its goals.
Communicate values, opinions and personal insights into original work of art.
Electives
Teachers & students can deep-dive into specific art topics not explored in curriculum:
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Screen Printing Techniques
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Art & the Environment
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Film Making
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Felting Fibers
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Painting Fractals
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The Science of Photography
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Sewing 101
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Mystery Jigsaw Puzzle
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The Art & Science of Letters
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Virtualization of the Art Experience
Language
Synapse language Program Highlights
The Synapse Language Program is an exposure program designed to inspire the love, excitement and joy for language learning promoting effective language acquisition and long-term retention. Teachers curate and design the innovative academic resources and curriculum promoting student agency. The program facilitates rewarding, relevant, respectful and celebratory cultural engagement opportunities between Synapse students and the communities of their target language.
Middle school: spanish & mandarin
In the Middle School, students can choose to learn either Spanish or Mandarin. All Middle School students take a language, and some students will take both in the course of their middle school career.
Program elements
Practice written & spoken language acquisition, including Chinese calligraphy for Mandarin students.
Celebrate cultural context, learning the history of the language and cultural festivals & practices.
Explore the yearly Change Maker in the vocabulary of your language.
Project Highlight
Language Accessibility
How can we make the Synapse campus a more linguistically accessible space? Students translated existing signs on campus into Spanish & Mandarin, and identified new areas where descriptive signage was needed, fulfilling this need with new signs in three languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin.
