Junior/Middle Years Programme Description
At Victoria School, all students in grades seven through nine are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. This program provides a framework of academic challenge that encourages students to embrace and understand the connections between academic studies and the real world, and become critical and reflective thinkers.
All students take the following core courses: English Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, French, Physical Education and Health.
The heart of the program revolves around five key elements:
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Encourages international mindedness in students to develop a foundation in their own language and culture
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Encourages a positive attitude to learning by challenging students to solve problems, show creativity and resourcefulness, and participate actively in their communities
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Reflects real life by providing a framework that allows students to see the connections among the subjects themselves, and between the subjects and real issues
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Support the development of communication skills to encourage inquiry, understanding, language acquisition, and to allow student reflection and expression
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Emphasizes, through the learner profile, the development of the whole student – physically, intellectually, emotionally and ethically
Teachers use these five key elements and organize the provincial curriculum through five areas of interaction:
- Approaches to learning
- Human Ingenuity
- Health and social education
- Community and Service
- Environments
The path to independent, inquiring learners:
Part of the MYP has students work toward a personal project at the end of the grade nine year. At Victoria School, students in grade eight and nine take an extra course called Discovery. This course allows students the opportunity to take a two year journey of exploration into a topic of their choice. They work with a teacher mentor to develop a project that is of particular interest and personal choice.
Arts and the Middle Years Programme:
As a school of choice within Edmonton Public Schools, Victoria School of the Arts strives to create a space where students can explore, discover their passions for, create, be inspired by, and achieve - in the arts. In all arts courses, students develop individual creativity within the framework of a given artistic discipline. Students have meaningful interactions between art forms and other subject areas. They receive excellent instruction, participate in workshops with guest artists, and experience the challenge of surpassing their personal and artistic goals.
The arts focus in the junior years at Victoria school is unique in that students in grade seven have the opportunity to study three arts options. It is here that they will begin to discover their passion. In grade eight and nine, students refine their choices and select two arts options. They spend more time with each option, developing a track that they may choose to follow into high school.
Students at Victoria School of the Arts may choose their options from the following arts classes:
Choral Music
The choral program offers young singers the opportunity develop their musical understanding and ability by exploring a wide variety of music from different times and places. Class members become a vital part of a committed and supportive ensemble which challenges and encourages them in their growth as musicians.
Dance
Dance students study creative movement, jazz, tap, ballet, modern, and folk dance. They improve technical skills and study dance history, musical theory and choreography. Because dance students come to Victoria School with varying levels of technical skill dance experience is matched with the appropriate level of instruction.
Drama
Drama students study movement, speech, improvisation, technical theatre and theatre history to provide them with the tools and insight to tell stories through action. They perform daily in practical scene work, participate in character development and role play, come to understand theatre tradition and etiquette, and learn more about themselves.
Instrumental Music
While learning to play a wind or brass instrument, students have the opportunity to work on multi-disciplinary projects, perform at concerts and festivals, attend band camps and workshops, study music history, and develop understanding and recognition of musical elements through the study of music theory and ear training.
Video Studies (Grade 8 & 9 only)
Through learning new technological skills and hands-on experience, Video students participate in a fast-changing, exciting artistic world. Students increase their awareness of how media influences society through exploration of television and media in our culture, along with project work in commercials, how-to videos, movie trailers, reality television, music videos, public service announcements, animation and autobiography.
Visual Art
Visual Art students use a variety of media, including pencil, graphite, charcoal, chalk, oil pastel, tempera, acrylic, and ink to draw realistically from observation and expressively from memory and imagination. They create sculptures using clay, cardboard, papier-maché, fabric, wire or wood; learn about artists' lives and styles through selected periods in history; and develop a large and precise art vocabulary through written work and discussion of class work and work and student work exhibited in various gallery spaces.