Middle School: Academically Enriching Curriculum

Dear Academic Approach Families & Colleagues: Since 2001, we’ve worked extensively with high school students preparing for college entrance exams and success on and beyond those tests. We’ve also worked with many middle and elementary school students and teachers preparing for high school entrance exams (independent, parochial, boarding, and selective public schools) as well as students needing academic support in the lower grades. Through that work, we’ve learned one clear thing from our students: the jump from middle to high school can be steep, and students can feel unprepared for the rigors they encounter. To help, we’ve developed and released our new middle school curriculum. This robust set of texts is designed to support students in not only preparing for high school entrance exams but also (true to our roots) preparing for success beyond the test—in high school, college, and beyond. These texts encompass a wide breadth of content and leverage our expertise in college readiness to ensure students are receiving rigorous instruction. Many students applying for high school face a unique challenge—they’ll take multiple tests for different types of schools, and they’ll prepare for all these tests simultaneously. Our curriculum is designed to support such a path. We have developed diagnostics to assess a student’s strengths and gaps across all high school entrance exams, and a curriculum to support high-impact instruction across these exams. You can see more on our middle school curriculum here. Tomorrow, we’ll share more about how our rigorous instruction not only prepares students for a wide variety of assessments but also prepares them for academic success.  Be well, Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO