Grade 7 Registration

Students in grade 7 have the opportunity to take a high school course in middle school. 

Two courses are offered in grade 7: Spanish A (open to any student) and Intermediate Algebra (open to students in accelerated math)

Spanish 1A

Spanish 1A is equivalent to the first semester of the high school’s Spanish I course.  Students successfully completing Spanish 1A will earn 0.5 high school credits, and can advance to Spanish 1B as an 8th grader, which would then complete their fully 1.0 Spanish I high school credit, allowing them to enter the high school being able to enroll in Spanish II.  

Students in the Spanish 1A course will begin with the basic fundamentals of Spanish. Basic practical vocabulary and sentence structure in the present and immediate future tenses are introduced throughout the year. Two important elements in the classroom are the teacher’s use of spoken Spanish and the students’ development of good listening skills and pronunciation. Culture is also studied through songs, current events, and movies. skits, dialogues, games, and videos are used to supplement the text and foster increased language ability.

This class is NOT recommended for native speakers. Native Speakers are encouraged to take Spanish for Native Speakers in grade 9.

Intermediate Algebra

This course covers Minnesota Math standards from both 8th and 9th grade. The course includes the study of the real number systems, operations with polynomials, linear and quadratic equations and inequalities, functions, stats and probability, and radicals.

This course is ONLY open to students in grade 7 that have sucessfully completed Accelerated Math 6.

In 7th grade, students can chose to take Spanish A. Spanish A meets every other day for the entire year and is equivalent to half a year of high school Spanish.

Spanish is a class offered at the middle school and is taught by a middle school teacher. The curriculum, scope and sequence and assessments used are the same as what is used at the high school. Middle school and high school teachers regularly collaborate. 

Middle School students can earn high school credit for these courses upon successful completion. The letter grade earned in these courses will appear on the high school transcript but is NOT calculated into the high school GPA. The goal is to provide students the opportunity to try out a high school course in an environment with lower risks. 

Grades for high school courses work differently than middle school. Grades are reported by semesters and are cumulative, meaning that a grade is calculated across two quarters. The first semester grade will include your student’s work for both quarter 1 and 2. The second semester grades will include work for both quarter 3 and 4. Upon successful complementation of all four quarters, students earn .5 credit. Students will need to successfully complete Spanish in both grades 7 and 8 to start high school in Spanish 2.

Students who are struggling or not successful after quarter 1, may consider or be asked to drop the course. Students who drop the course before the start of quarter 2 will not have the course on their high school transcript. Grades earned will still also appear on the middle school report card. Students who do not earn a passing grade for the first semester are required to repeat this course at the high school and should work with their teacher to determine if they should continue in the course. Students who earn less than a C will be encouraged to repeat the course when they get to high school.  9th grade course requests will be updated for any student that failed the first or second semester. 

Some students in advanced math will have take Intermediate Algebra which is also a high school level course.

While Two River’s offers three different world languages: French, German and Spanish, we are only able to offer one language at the middle school, Spanish. Students can choose German or French when they get to high school to take and still access the courses that provide college credit. In Spanish in order to access both levels of courses at the high school that offer college credit (Spanish IV CE and V CE), students need to start taking Spanish in 7th grade.

Students in grade 8 in 24-25, will have an opportunity to complete the first half of Spanish I. We will scaffold instruction to ensure students can move on to Spanish II in grade 9 in the 25-26

Our current AVID students do not have access to all of the required courses in middle school, for example many of our 8th grade AVID students take Spanish and therefore are not in Physical Education and Health, Music or Art. These courses are all required for students. In our redesigned schedule all of our elective courses will be offered every other day. We did consider offering AVID every other day, but doing so would mean that we wouldn’t be able to implement all of the components that are required for a course to be considered AVID elective.

The AVID elective will be offered at the high school. Interested students will learn about the requirements, application and interview process in the fall of their 8th grade year. 

For students currently in the AVID 7 elective in the 2023-2024 school year, we have worked with our high school and they will be able to continue in AVID when they get to the high school without completing the application and interview process if they meet these two criteria. First, they must successfully complete Warrior Prep.  Second, they must maintain a GPA of 2.5.