Middle school electives - 3 years of band or a foreign language?

[Anonymous]

Yes, there's room for both band+ foreign language for my middle schooler. Some people do drop the music elective in 8th grade to do part of the high school computer science requirement that can be started in grade 8 to leave more space in high school for other challenging coursework.

[Anonymous]

I agree about doing both, if only to start the language study early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there's room for both band+ foreign language for my middle schooler. Some people do drop the music elective in 8th grade to do part of the high school computer science requirement that can be started in grade 8 to leave more space in high school for other challenging coursework.

11:55 here. You can do that in the summer. DD chose to do it in 9th grade, with AP Comp Sci Principles, since that gives her an additional AP, and she's not interested in pursuing more comp sci courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there's room for both band+ foreign language for my middle schooler. Some people do drop the music elective in 8th grade to do part of the high school computer science requirement that can be started in grade 8 to leave more space in high school for other challenging coursework.

11:55 here. You can do that in the summer. DD chose to do it in 9th grade, with AP Comp Sci Principles, since that gives her an additional AP, and she's not interested in pursuing more comp sci courses.

how do you do it in the summer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there's room for both band+ foreign language for my middle schooler. Some people do drop the music elective in 8th grade to do part of the high school computer science requirement that can be started in grade 8 to leave more space in high school for other challenging coursework.

11:55 here. You can do that in the summer. DD chose to do it in 9th grade, with AP Comp Sci Principles, since that gives her an additional AP, and she's not interested in pursuing more comp sci courses.

how do you do it in the summer?

DP. MCPS offers summer school, and there are some courses, like health and the basic computer science/engineering courses, that can be taken for original credit. Those who take an art or music elective throughout all years of middle school and high school frequently do this so they can fit everything in, including other electives.

[Anonymous]

Definitely language over band.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that's kind of annoying is that as a 6th grader, you probably won't get the electives you want, so it feels like you may as well do band and foreign language. However, after 6th grade, they don't recommend interrupting either band or FL, so it's a bit of a catch 22 with electives. My older kid ended up doing band and FL and, while FL was a bit challenging at first, in hindsight I think it was worth it starting it early. He'll be able to go to a slightly higher level in HS and also be done with it a bit earlier if he chooses to (yes, I know that some people here talk about colleges that want to see 2 or 4 years of FL in HS, I think I'll just have him do at least 2 years in HS and kinda not worry about these alleged other schools.) Not to mention that it's easier to learn FLs when younger.

This is interesting. Are there electives that are generally considered 6th grade electives? What types of classes are they likely to end up with? How do kids taking both band and a language take computational thinking?

Maybe that is an issue specific to Julius West? In our MS, all students generally get their first choice for language and other elective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that's kind of annoying is that as a 6th grader, you probably won't get the electives you want, so it feels like you may as well do band and foreign language. However, after 6th grade, they don't recommend interrupting either band or FL, so it's a bit of a catch 22 with electives. My older kid ended up doing band and FL and, while FL was a bit challenging at first, in hindsight I think it was worth it starting it early. He'll be able to go to a slightly higher level in HS and also be done with it a bit earlier if he chooses to (yes, I know that some people here talk about colleges that want to see 2 or 4 years of FL in HS, I think I'll just have him do at least 2 years in HS and kinda not worry about these alleged other schools.) Not to mention that it's easier to learn FLs when younger.

This is interesting. Are there electives that are generally considered 6th grade electives? What types of classes are they likely to end up with? How do kids taking both band and a language take computational thinking?

Maybe that is an issue specific to Julius West? In our MS, all students generally get their first choice for language and other elective.

I'm the PP who posted about the 6th graders not getting their first choice of electives earlier. My kid is not at Julius West, but this is what we were told (specifically in terms of the electives that involved rotations). He also wasn't super interested in any of the electives, so that also helped our decision... I also figured the tech or CS electives would be more interesting in HS compared to MS.

[Anonymous]

You can normally take Health and CompSci online over the summers.

[Anonymous]

If the kid wants to do band then do band.

Starting language too early had a downside unless your kid loves languages. If school doesn’t offer a 1A / 1B options then will be looking at some very difficult classes in HS. Many liberal arts colleges want to see 4 years of language in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the kid wants to do band then do band.

Starting language too early had a downside unless your kid loves languages. If school doesn’t offer a 1A / 1B options then will be looking at some very difficult classes in HS. Many liberal arts colleges want to see 4 years of language in HS.

I don’t know if that’s true if you have finished an AP language in junior year. At that point it’s just obvious there’s nothing else for the kid to complete at most schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the kid wants to do band then do band.

Starting language too early had a downside unless your kid loves languages. If school doesn’t offer a 1A / 1B options then will be looking at some very difficult classes in HS. Many liberal arts colleges want to see 4 years of language in HS.

I don’t know if that’s true if you have finished an AP language in junior year. At that point it’s just obvious there’s nothing else for the kid to complete at most schools

Agree. At that point kid has shown mastery of a language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that's kind of annoying is that as a 6th grader, you probably won't get the electives you want, so it feels like you may as well do band and foreign language. However, after 6th grade, they don't recommend interrupting either band or FL, so it's a bit of a catch 22 with electives. My older kid ended up doing band and FL and, while FL was a bit challenging at first, in hindsight I think it was worth it starting it early. He'll be able to go to a slightly higher level in HS and also be done with it a bit earlier if he chooses to (yes, I know that some people here talk about colleges that want to see 2 or 4 years of FL in HS, I think I'll just have him do at least 2 years in HS and kinda not worry about these alleged other schools.) Not to mention that it's easier to learn FLs when younger.

This is interesting. Are there electives that are generally considered 6th grade electives? What types of classes are they likely to end up with? How do kids taking both band and a language take computational thinking?

Maybe that is an issue specific to Julius West? In our MS, all students generally get their first choice for language and other elective.

I'm the PP who posted about the 6th graders not getting their first choice of electives earlier. My kid is not at Julius West, but this is what we were told (specifically in terms of the electives that involved rotations). He also wasn't super interested in any of the electives, so that also helped our decision... I also figured the tech or CS electives would be more interesting in HS compared to MS.

Our school doesn't do rotations--students choose one activity for the entire year and do it every day--but I don't know of any 6th graders who did not get their first choice. In terms of CS/engineering, some students choose to do the high-school level course in 8th grade so that they don't have to take it in HS to get a requirement out of the way. It leaves more space in HS for other electives. I agree that the non-HS courses offered to 6th and 7th graders are not especially interesting.

[Anonymous]

Both!!

[Anonymous]

Just know that colleges want to see at least 2 years of the same language *in high school*. So if they start a language in 6th grade they will need to either start a new language of take level 4 and 5/AP in HS and those are hard classes!