Middle Overview :: Merryhill School

In grades 6-8, our students build upon their academic skills, develop critical life skills, create projects using the latest information technology and pursue interdisciplinary topics. Our schools offer a unique opportunity to develop leadership, interpersonal, and study skills through our Learning Without Walls initiative.

Learning Without Walls is a Nobel Learning Communities educational initiative that enables students to collaborate with peers in our sister schools across the U.S. With the support of the Nobel Learning Education Department, our teachers create shared learning experiences to support the curriculum, which can include virtual field trips and the utilization of blogging technology. Teachers guide their students through these interactive projects across schools using conference calls, email, or where possible, actual face-to-face presentations.

We emphasize life skills throughout our curriculum.

We weave practice of real life skills into everything we do during the school day to help students become well-rounded, confident and prepared for the next step in their educational journey.

Leadership	Communications	Study Skills
Innovation Reasoning Communications Conflict resolution Ethics	Project planning Use of technology Research Report writing Presentations	Organization Project planning Time management

We study topics that help our students understand the interrelatedness of our 21st century world.

Global Understanding – students gain an understanding and appreciation of people and cultures around the world.

Systems Identification – from Global Positioning Systems to river systems, students will recognize that elements often combine to make a complex whole.

Environmental Awareness – students have opportunities to apply scientific processes and higher-order thinking skills to analyze and create solutions for a variety of environmental problems.

Concepts and Characteristics of Leadership – students identify, compare, and evaluate personal characteristics of leaders and strive to develop these characteristics in themselves.

Learning Without Walls - working together across state lines

We believe that students learn by doing. Using technology, we create memorable partnerships among classes hundreds, even thousands, of miles apart. Students share research, resources, observations, ideas, and challenges on an ongoing basis. This interaction creates a rich learning environment, preparing them for tomorrow’s education and business worlds.

An example: Students from four Nobel Learning Communities schools in Texas, Virginia, Washington state and Illinois joined forces to investigate the facts and fictions of global warming. Using the Internet and blogging technology, they combined their efforts and created a shared information source for all to see. The project extended over six months and reinforced content skills and knowledge, and developed their awareness and basic understanding of global warming. In the process, students practiced important academic skills:

Language and Literacy, as they researched and summarized findings, wrote web text for blog postings, and took part in interschool conference calls.

Applied Math skills, by collecting, organizing, and analyzing data. They also explored cause-and-effect relationships, and gained scientific perspectives by interpreting and analyzing the research.

Critical thinking, project management, and leadership skills as they led interschool conference calls and presented and defended their thoughts as teams. At the conclusion of the project, they evaluated their performance and that of other teams.