Middle School

Humanities integrate Language Arts and Social Studies. Our Humanities classes aim to strengthen students’ communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and reading comprehension skills. Students learn humanities classes with French and English teachers co-teaching and teaching separately to help draw connections and build bridges between the two languages and curriculums.

Humanities focus on the human experience through reading, writing, history, art, philosophy, religion, government, social classes, methodology, gender, and other culture. Subject taught include: French, English, History, Geography

Project-Based Learning Methods used in teaching Humanities The teachers promote active learning to engage students and promote independent decision-making during lessons. Our teachers encourage student-led discussions, student-based inquiries, primary sources analysis, and analyzing different sources.

Mathematics integrates the French and American math curricula to help students draw connections, analyze curriculum differences, and develop more profound critical thinking skills and alternative perspectives. American math system looks at problem-solving in real-life situations, while French promotes learning math theory and practicing essential principles, understanding, and writing proofs. The combination of French and American math curricula allows the students to view math as an open-minded subject with multiple ways to solve a problem and a structured manner where they have to use principles and math practices. (rewrite to make it more clear). Our math program prepares middle school students to enter high school with high proficiency in Algebra and Geometry.

Project-Based Methods used in teaching Mathematics We challenge students to engage in inquiry-based learning, proving their thinking and communicating it to their peers. To engage students in learning, we connect math lessons to student lives to help them understand how math is used everywhere. Students also engage in various hands-on math projects.

Singapore Math

Starting in elementary school, we start teaching mathematics using the Singapore Math pedagogical method. Click here to learn more. 

The Science curriculum focuses on the three branches of science: physical, life, and earth sciences. We provide students with bilingual co-teaching classes, where there is both a French science teacher & an english science teacher instructing the class in a bilingual fashion.

Our French and English teachers work together to strengthen students’ analytical thinking skills. We want students to be able to come up with different solutions and introduce research and analytical thinking. We expect students to become better writers who analyze reports.

Project-Based Method used in teaching Science The science curriculum aims to foster excitement and enthusiasm for learning science concepts through inquiry-based and student-active experiences.

For example: FAA’s seventh graders drew upon their knowledge of science, coding, and math to create hypothetical models showing how human behavior can affect a disease’s path through the general population. Drawing on real-world data, the students applied what epidemiologists have learned about the effects of masking, vaccination, and isolation. They created computer programs that would forecast a disease’s severity based on those different controls. Beyond requiring students to synthesize science, coding, and mathematical knowledge, this project showed students how proper data science can be used to combat misinformation and lead to better practices in public health. 

The Arts Plastiques course follows the requirements of the French curriculum and is inspired by an interdisciplinary approach.

In a society increasingly based on visual information, it is more essential than ever to teach children and teenagers what is an image, how to create, compose it and decipher its message.

Students will be learning perceptual and vocabulary tools. In addition, they will be developing creative expression, learning historical background and practicing critical thinking. Moreover, students study topics through a transversal approach which allows then to create bridges between Arts, History, Literature and Philosophy.

With assignments such as “Masked, unmasked”, “off the frame”, “autoportrait in collage”, “wonderful landscapes” and more, students discover their own creative process. There are as many methods as there are students in a class and individual creativity is valued.

We encourage students to explore different mediums before learning specific techniques  (drawing people, landscapes, watercolor technique, comics, designing a poster…). After each project, they discover and learn about artworks of various styles and from different time periods. Learning the historical background and context as well as connections with other disciplines help them gain global and multicultural perspective of Arts and Humanities.

The French American Academy has STEM teachers and programs for both middle and elementary school. While we have dedicated classes and curriculum for science and math, STEM is a separate class that focuses on collaborative projects and frequently includes coding. These projects frequently call upon students to reinvest knowledge from their science and math classes, using critical thinking skills in order to solve a problem or meet a challenge. In middle school, students are at a critical stage in their development, and they are starting to think more seriously about their future academic and career paths. This is why it is crucial to expose them to STEM subjects early on, so they can develop an interest in these fields and build a foundation for their future studies and career choices. Let’s look at a few of the STEM projects that our middle school students have recently undertaken.

Click here to learn about the STEM class & the STEM projects.

Our media education program encourages students to become informed, responsible, and critical consumers of information. Through age-appropriate lessons, they learn how media influences opinions, how to verify sources, and how to communicate thoughtfully in digital spaces. By integrating these skills across subjects, we help students understand the power of media and use it to express their ideas creatively and ethically.

To provide our middle schoolers with interdisciplinary experience and strengthen oral communication skills, listening, reading, critical thinking, and confidence, students engage in debates based on various topics such as current events, historical events, or literature circles. 

In 6th grade students start a 3rd language, Spanish. Our goal is that each student achieve a level of proficiency A1 or A2 of the European Common Framework at the end of 8th grade, with the official diploma of DELE