What is Quest?
Welcome to the homepage for the seventh grade Quest program at Moorestown Friends School in Moorestown, New Jersey. For the 2019-20 year, the program will be comprised of Science, Social Studies, and English.
Quest is a multi-disciplinary, inquiry-based approach to learning; one that places a high value on student’s interests and age appropriate developmental needs. The listed skills will support self discovery, intellectual curiosity, and encourage the true joy of learning.In order to give you an idea about what will be our primary skill and content focus this year, we have included these lists below. Please know that these lists will evolve during the year as students will have opportunities to be an integral part of developing some of the curriculum.
We will ground the work we do based on these four essential questions:
1. What is important to you and how will you let the world know?
2.What is the role of individuals in a community and in society?
2.What is the role of individuals in a community and in society?
3.How are human and natural systems created and interrelated?
Students in Quest will focus on the development of lifelong skills such as:
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Leadership
- Intellectual curiosity
- Critical thinking
- Creativity
- Time management, project management, and organization
- Resilience and perseverance
- Self-advocacy, goal setting, and ownership of one’s learning
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Communication with a variety of audiences
- Identification and implementation of personal learning styles and preferences
- Using evidence to support original and/or observable ideas
Specifically, students will work to develop skills in Quest: Humanities such as:
- Literary analysis and critical reading
- Creative writing and reflective writing
- Short and long essay writing
- Vocabulary acquisition and application
- Grammar and writing mechanics
- Identifying bias and understanding multiple perspectives
- Geographic literacy
- Global citizenship
- Research and citation
- Note-taking
- Problem solving and revision
Specifically, students will work to develop skills in Quest: Science such as:
- Problem-solving through the practice of the Engineering Design Process, the Scientific Method, and hands-on discovery
- Experimenting
- Observing
- Predicting
- Inferring
- Measuring and quantifying
- Classifying
- Graphing
- Data interpretation and analysis
- Data driven decision-making
- Scientific research
- Scientific literacy (building and understanding models, and the limitations of science)
- Scientific communication, both oral and written
- Scientific citizenship
- Building foundational knowledge of Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering that will serve to support future science experiences.
Rather than traditional grades, students in Quest will be regularly evaluated and complete self-assessments based on the following categories
- Quality of Effort
- Time Management
- Metacognition
- Self-Advocacy
- Leadership
- Discussion Habits
- Critical Thinking
- Writing
- Collaboration