MFS Moorestown Friends School
Academics

Academics - Middle School

Intensive Learning

Moorestown Friends School knows that learning does not confine itself to the classroom. Throughout their education, MFS students experience active opportunities for growth that take them off campus.

Intensive Learning
For one week each March, regular classes are suspended for "Intensive Learning," when Middle and Upper School students and teachers engage in an in-depth study of a specific subject, often involving off-campus research. This long-standing MFS tradition – which dates to the mid 1970s – allows teachers and students to break out of the structure of formal class periods and traditional study by subject disciplines (math, English, history) for a time of experiential learning in out-of-classroom settings. Both students and teachers are freed to see themselves in a new light: as life-long learners, students of the world around them.

Spring 2009 Intensive Learning

Groups of 11th graders traveled to the Florida Everglades, New Orleans, and Mexico, to perform service.  Other groups of juniors worked locally at New Visions Community Services in Camden, worked to help restore New Jersey’s official tall ship the A.J. Meerwald in Bivalve, NJ, or took part in a community gardening project.  MFS is committed not just to service work, but also to service learning, which means that students study the causes of and possible solutions to the problems and issues with which they are engaged.

The Intensive Learning topics for each grade were:

Grade Level Intensive Learning Subjects
5

Food and Nutrition—students learned about nutrition, hunger, the restaurant business, and environmental issues related to the food industry. Students visited a restaurant, a farm, and a factory, and did a week-long food collection for the Food Bank of South Jersey. 
6  
Zoo design—students learned the habitat requirements for specific animals, and designed and constructed miniature zoos. The class visited the Philadelphia Zoo and Cape May Zoo.
7
Musical Theater—students worked on all aspects of a theatrical production, and performed it for their parents. This year’s show was called Twinderella.
8
Environmental Education—included trips to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Learning, and YMCA Camp Mason in Hardwick, NJ.
9
Celebrating Philadelphia’s Diversity—students looked at the impact of immigration, industry, urban planning and community activism on the city, and visited several neighborhoods as well as the Atwater Kent Museum.
10
Exploration of Various Learning Styles - Students chose one week-long program out of five options, which ranged from “Wind-Powered Sculpture” to “Physical Theater and Social Justice.” The entire grade visited Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ.
11
Service Learning (see above)
12
Senior Retreat and class bonding

In addition, two cultural exchange trips took place during this period.

Upper School students and teachers traveled to Paris for a nine-day cultural adventure. Students spent mornings attending French language classes at Accord Ecole de Langues, leaving the afternoons and evenings free to explore the city, walk the Champs Elysées and visit national treasures such as Notre Dame Cathedral, La Sorbonne, L’Arc de Triomphe, Le Musée Louvre, La Tour Eifffel, Le Musée d’Orsay and many others.  In preparation for this trip, each student researched and presented to the group an aspect of French history and/or culture, providing a snapshot of the excitement that awaits in Paris.  

Eleven MFS Upper School students and two teachers traveled to Spain as part of the school’s bi-annual Spanish exchange program.  This program is offered every two years to those students who are studying Spanish and are interested in hosting students in the U.S. and visiting Spain. MFS families hosted ten students and two teachers from Nuestra Señora de Lourdes, a school located in Elorrio, Spain, a small town in the Basque region of the country. They spent three weeks with MFS students and their families.

 

 
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