Falmouth Academy Academics
The Curriculum
Falmouth Academy is an independent, college preparatory, day school for students in grades seven through twelve. Although Falmouth Academy is a reading and writing school, our students enjoy great success in mathematics, science, and the arts. Our core curriculum requires each Falmouth Academy student to take English, history, science, mathematics, and a foreign language every year. This course of instruction is rigorous with a concentration on the skills of writing, close reading, research, and effective management of time. Cooperative learning as well as independent research are central to the curriculum. Students may take up to four elective courses each year, and physical education, in addition to their core academic courses.
English
In English courses at Falmouth Academy, students read a wide range of works from Our Town and The Odyssey in grades 8 and 9 to As I Lay Dying and Hamlet in grades 11 and 12. In many instances, the course work in English complements the history curriculum. For example, as students read The Odyssey in grade 9, they are studying the Greek world in their history course, Western Civilization I.
In all English courses students learn to interpret carefully, to present their ideas articulately in classroom discussions, and to write well. In grade 7, students use the focus paragraph as a model of analytical writing. After mastering this concise and rigorous format, they move on to longer essays as they develop as writers and thinkers. After six years of our analytical writing program, seniors are well prepared for college writing. When students return to visit us from college, they often mention that they are among the best prepared and most able writers in their classes.
In addition to analytical writing, Falmouth Academy students explore creative and expository writing in a variety of ways. Some of this writing is done as part of interdisciplinary work with the Arts Department. For example, eighth-graders draft detailed essays about themselves in their English classes while drawing self-portraits in the art studio. Through this process, students realize the importance of careful self-examination and precise expression--both as writers and as artists--as the lessons and observations of language and art come together. Four years later, as seniors, the students re-examine their eighth-grade self-portraits and then write and paint new studies of themselves. Using varied techniques and texts, Falmouth Academy students develop into astute observers and able writers as they explore language, literature, and culture.
History
The history curriculum at Falmouth Academy is both broad and deep. The six-year program begins and ends with the study of world cultures in Grades 7 and 12, examines the history of the United States in Grades 8 and 11, and focuses on a two-year study of Western civilization in Grades 9 and 10. Within this core curriculum, students share a series of experiences--lively discussions, debates, presentations to each other, guest speakers, and trips--while also exploring their own particular interests through research projects. In their senior year, students may add an extra humanities course, Rhetoric, which extends the students' work with language, presentation skills, and issues of government, public policy, and media.
History teachers at Falmouth Academy aim to produce students who are curious about investigating the past, cautious about the information they receive that gives them their picture of the past, and skilled in shaping that information clearly and effectively. Students become increasingly proficient at thoughtful inquiry, clear and precise writing, and poised presenting. In addition, the department encourages linking history with other disciplines through both planned units, such as the Arts-in-Humanities program, and continual cooperation with teachers in other departments.
Foreign Language
Falmouth Academy's foreign language program stems from the belief that responsible education must nurture young people's awareness of themselves as part of a global community. We offer six-year programs in the two major "source languages" from which our own language derived: French and German. Students learn in "immersion" classes taught by fluent French- or German-speaking teachers, all of whom have lived and studied in France or Germany. Small classes conducted in the target language foster oral communication--listening and speaking--from the first day when students learn to introduce themselves and greet each other in French or German to senior year when they are discussing in French or German major works of literature that they are reading in their second language. Falmouth Academy's emphasis on reading and writing is reflected in the progressive development of those skills in foreign language study. Younger students may write and perform skits using the vocabulary and grammar they are learning, while upperclassmen write short stories, fairy tales, thematic essays and textual analyses.
The department has well-established school partnerships with high schools in France and Germany. Biennial group exchanges give FA students the opportunity to use their second language as they visit and host French or German partners, live with their families, attend school with them, as well as explore Heidelberg, Germany or Nice, France. Seniors also demonstrate their linguistic proficiency through their success on Advanced Placement Examinations in German Language, French Language and French Literature.
Mathematics
The goal of the Falmouth Academy math department is to make mathematics relevant, accessible, and engaging to every student. All seventh graders take Math 7, an FA-designed curriculum which uses group work and projects to challenge the top students and to fill in any gaps in an individual student's preparation. The seventh grade year also serves as a placement assessment for eighth grade, when one third of the class takes Pre-Algebra and the rest of the class takes Algebra I. Students then proceed to Geometry; Algebra II; Statistics, Trigonometry, and Functions; Pre-Calculus; Mathematical Models and Applications; or Calculus. Falmouth Academy has designed a math program which ensures that every student's final math course at Falmouth Academy is a positive experience with students feeling that they have mastered every concept they will need for future study. Seniors in Pre-Calculus; Statistics, Trigonometry, and Functions; or Mathematical Models and Applications are prepared to take Calculus in college or can rest assured that they have mastered all the math they might need in the future. Seniors taking Calculus are prepared to take the Advanced Placement Exam and many students receive college placement or credit.
Science
Falmouth Academy provides a rigorous science curriculum, with every student taking a science course each year. Coursework includes Life Science (7th grade), Physical Science (8th grade), Earth Science (9th grade), Biology (10th grade), Chemistry (11th grade), and Physics (12th grade). All courses develop skills in critical inquiry, train students in proper application of the scientific method, and integrate math at the appropriate level. Weekly labs are an integral part of each course. The Life Science and Earth Science courses incorporate extensive field work into the curriculum. In addition to developing an understanding of important scientific concepts, it is the science department's goal to enhance students' sense of responsibility for their health, the environment, and the place of science in society.
All students in grades 7-11 design and carry out an independent research project that they present at Falmouth Academy's annual science fair. These projects allow the students to explore scientific research topics of specific interest to them and to develop skills in lab technique, scientific writing, and oral presentation. The top upper school science fair winners move on to compete at the regional and state levels. Eleven of our students have advanced to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair. Since 1994, FA has had six semi-finalists and two finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search and the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition. Seniors also do individual "major effort" projects that explore a remarkable diversity of subjects and end with the student presenting a 40-minute talk or a formal research paper.
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