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What if there was a middle school where students were asked to care about how their mind works? Where students were asked to wonder out loud. Imagine a place where kids are excited to learn. What if this place allowed students to struggle and helped them view perseverance through struggle as an opportunity for growth?
Mathematics
IVA's mathematics curriculum, Connected Math Project 3 (CMP3), presents students with robust and real-life problems – like deriving a formula for maximizing profit of a bike rental company. Students, not the textbook and not the teacher, do the high-level thinking about numbers and numerical relationships to come up with the problem's solution.
Students are also challenged with a Problem of the Week, which sometimes takes more than one week to complete. A POW requires more sustained thinking to solve -- often, students won't find an answer the first day. To see a real-life example of a POW that have puzzled and mathematicians check out this quick article on NPR. For a slightly longer explanation of the sort of mathematical practices that these home thinking assignments encourage read this article on seeing math students as sense-makers rather than mistake-makers. A POW write-up includes five sections: problem statement, process, solution, extension, and self-reflection. POWs are an opportunity for students to not only find a solution that works, but also to write about their thought process and explain their thinking.
IVA's math teacher's role is to lead students to discover patterns and formulas in the topics being explored. Students are given the space and encouragement to make conjectures, find counterexamples, and discuss other perspectives. Mental engagement and discussion is encouraged over note-taking. The aim is for students to develop a deep understanding of the topics through engagement, rather than writing down steps to memorize later.
Through practice, writing, deep thinking and problem-solving, students grow not only in the intellectual virtues, but also toward demonstrating mastery of Common Core State Standards in mathematics. Sometimes is it hard to imagine what a math classroom might look like that has such a mixture of deep conceptual understanding and practice. See our video, Math in a Minute at IVA, to step inside the classroom.
Home thinking will mostly take the form of the POW but students will also periodically have more traditional problems to practice skills. Read more about the POW directions and grading: POW_Directions_and_Rubric.pdf
Novels make up the bulk of what students read, discuss, analyze, and write about in Literature and Composition (LitComp) classes at IVA. Guided by the teacher, students engage in activities and thinking routines to explore each novel. These thinking routines serve as a launching point for discussion, when students share their ideas with partners as well as the whole class. The teacher creates frequent opportunities for students to ask meaningful questions and seek thorough and thoughtful answers to questions in the novel. Students, encouraged by the teacher and IVA's classroom culture, offer comments, observations, and wonderings – habits they come quickly to enjoy and take pride in. Through the novel, students in IVA LitComp classes have explored themes such as what it means to be human, how race and racism can affect a community, the meaning and value of friendship, how an adventure can change you, what makes beautiful language beautiful.
Some novels students may take on include:
Grade 6
The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkein,
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli,
A Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg,
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems by Langston Hughes.
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
Hurricane Dancers by Margarita Engle
Grade 7
The City of Ember by Jeanne Dupreau
Robinson Crusoe by Daniele Defoe
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare
Grade 8
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Enders Games by Orson Scott Card
Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Much, but not all, of classroom language and grammar development is based on Sentence Composing for Middle Schoolers by Don Killgallon and Sentence Combining by William Strong. Students learn to be better writers by studying good writing. Students analyze excerpts of sentences taken from well-written classic and current novels, break the sentences down into meaningful parts, then write ones of their own imitating the styles they see in the book. Over time and with this practice students grow into their own voice and style.
Through deep and practiced analysis of novels and the elements of strong writing, IVA's students can expect to be able to demonstrate all the English Language Arts skills in the Common Core State Standards.
Home thinking is primarily reading from the current novels. Students will be encouraged to read a certain number of chapters each week and think about/write down one question and one concept or connection.
Fostering intellectual virtues is not an alternative to a rigorous, standards-based curriculum. On the contrary, it is through active and reflective engagement of core academic knowledge and skills that students learn to practice the intellectual virtues. In selecting IVA's curriculum, the school's founders and teachers searched for existing published curricula in core areas that (1) aligned with the Common Core State Standards, (2) aimed at deep understanding, and (3) provided opportunities for the practice of intellectual virtues.
CAASPP State Test Scores
As a publicly funded independent charter school, IVA students, as any other public school students, take the state-sponsored academic achievement test known as the Smarter Balanced assessment presented through the California Assessment of Academic Progress or CAASPP site. While we believe these tests measure something important, they do not begin to capture everything that is involved with growth in intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity. Therefore, we believe they are only partly reflective of the quality of education offered at IVA. For further indicators of this quality, see here.
In its yearly LCAP IVA creates goals for the next year based on previous year data, which includes CAASPP data and feedback on school goals. See more information about IVA's LCAP and a slideshow for more information about test scores by student demographic group, as well as IVA's other goals. For an overview of IVA's Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP) and the School Accountability Report Card (SARC), please see the governance page. The results from the last three years' assessments are as follows:
*Note - Results from previous year test scores are accessible to schools at the beginning of the next school year.
IVA's 2021-2022 test scores are in the highest 10% of all schools in LA County.
CAASPP STATE TEST - SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENT
% of Students who Met or Exceeded Grade Level Standards
IVA
Local (LBUSD)
State (CA)
English Language Arts 2021-22
70%
48%
47%
English Language Arts 2020-21
N/A
N/A
N/A
English Language Arts 2018-19
77%
53%
50%
English Language Arts 2017-18
75%
45%
48%
IVA
Local (LBUSD)
State (CA)
Mathematics 2021-22
56%
33%
33%
Mathematics 2020-21
N/A
N/A
N/A
Mathematics 2018-19
59%
44%
38%
Mathematics 2017-18
61%
34%
35%
IVA
Local (LBUSD)
State (CA)
Science 2021-22
57%
29%
Science 2020-21
N/A
N/A
28%
Science 2018-19
70%
30%
28%
IVA has results from the CAST Science test given to our 8th grade students. IVA only has 8th-grade students, so its averages do not include 5th- or 11th-grade student results based on the CAST test. New Generation Science Standards version of the test began as a pilot in the 2016-2017 school year.
