AVID

Curriculum Overview:  Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) is academic elective courses that prepares students for college readiness and success.  Each week, students receive instruction utilizing a rigorous college preparatory curriculum that incorporates strategies focused on Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading (WICOR) to support their academic growth.  In addition, the AVID standards include a focus on Character Development, Communication, and College Preparedness. Students will have the opportunity to express their personal identity and goals, explore career options, and learn more about colleges across the country. Most importantly, students  will work together to create a meaningful community. As an AVID family, students  will support, challenge, and celebrate each other.

Click the cards below to view the Scope & Sequence for each course.

Business

Curriculum Overview:  Wisconsin Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs (Business and Information Technology; Family and Consumer Sciences; Health Science; Marketing, Management and Entrepreneurship; and Technology and Engineering) have a rich history and foundation of preparing young adults for the next steps in their lives—postsecondary education and the world of work. Through ties to business, industry and community, CTE programs provide perspectives and partnerships necessary to educate the entire student.  Career and Technical Education is both a collection of educational programs or content areas as well as a system of preparing students to be career and college ready. 

Personal financial literacy education is the focus on teaching students the ability to understand, evaluate, and communicate information about money and financial services. This learning includes the selection of appropriate financial options, the ability to plan for the future, and the capability to respond to life events and their effect on personal finances. The Wisconsin Standards for Personal Financial Literacy (the standards) are divided into six strands: Financial Mindset, Education and Employment, Money Management, Saving and Investing, Credit and Debt, & Risk Management and Insurance.

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Computer Science

Curriculum Overview:  Computer Science is an academic discipline that encompasses the study of computers and algorithmic processes, including their principles, their hardware and software designs, their applications, networks, and their impact on society.  Students will have the opportunity to experience many of the aspects of computer science from beginning coding to multimedia production to game design to cybersecurity.

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English

Curriculum Overview:  English Language Arts instruction includes four distinct areas: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language.  ELA has a broad emphases on the following principles:

• ELA as an integrated discipline that promotes achievement across all disciplines
• ELA instruction building an understanding of the human experience
• Literacy as an evolving concept, and becoming literate is a lifelong learning process
• Critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity as integral to effective ELA  instruction and as attributes necessary for Wisconsin graduates
• Literacy, language, and meaning as socially constructed, evolving, and enhanced by multiple perspectives

Through instruction in ELA, all students will engage in these academic tasks:

• Demonstrate growth and academic independence, including goal setting
• Build strong content knowledge and skill
• Respond to varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline
• Comprehend as well as critique
• Select evidence based on relevance and reliability
• Synthesize ideas from multiple sources
• Use technology and digital media strategically and capably,
• Come to understand a wide array of perspectives, values, and cultures

Three ways students in our classes connect with pieces of literature:

1.  Major Work/Full Class Instruction: In most English classes, students read an anchor text together. In some courses, students read multiple texts all together. Some courses have no full class texts. Anchor texts are aligned to the specific standards for the course. Direct instruction, discussion, and writing in response to the text all happen as full-class activities. 

 2.  Limited Choice Independent Read or Literature Circle: In a closed choice reading experience where students are doing independent work with a book but can only choose from teacher-provided selections.  Students are applying skills in a more independent or group reading experience with direction, conferencing, and mini-lessons from the instructor. This is a less common situation, but we do have a few closed-choice lists in our 9-12 curriculum. 

 3.  Open Choice Independent Read or Literature Circle: Independent reading experiences where students or groups of students, including students enrolled in Literature Seminar, a senior elective course,  fit into neither of the above categories.  In these cases, the students choose a  book that fits particular criteria related to the standards of the course (examples include: award-winning, young adult, literary fiction, nonfiction, biography, etc.), but they have an open choice to select the specific title.  Students may choose any book that meets the criteria.  Therefore, the books cannot go through a vetting process, and often the teacher will not have read all of the texts.  Students are applying skills in a more independent or group reading experience with direction, conferencing, and mini-lessons from the instructor. 

Important Note:  All literature in our curriculum has been carefully selected based on the standards of the course and their literary merit. Nevertheless, we affirm that what an individual student reads is always a family decision. We deeply respect the views of our students’ families. Therefore, students in Homestead English classes may choose to skip reading scenes with sensitive content if they wish. In this case, we provide them with a brief summary of the scene as an alternative. If your family prefers that your student not read a particular novel, we provide an alternative experience that aligns with the standards of the unit.

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Engineering

Curriculum Overview:  Engineering empowers students to step into the role of an engineer, adopt a problem-solving mindset, and make the leap from dreamers to doers. The program’ s courses engage students in compelling, real-world challenges that help them become better collaborators and thinkers.

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Fine Arts

Curriculum Overview:  

Fine Arts instruction is done through  four core processes: Creating, Performing/Presenting/Producing, Responding and Connecting.  It emphasizes:

• Creating, developing and refining artistic work
• Select, analyze and interpret artistic work for presentation
• Develop and refine techniques for presentation
• Convey meaning through presentation
• Evaluate artistic works
• Synthesize knowledge and personal experiences
• Relate artistic works with societal, cultural,  and historical context

The Homestead Fine Arts Department comprises five distinct learning areas:  Band, Choir, Orchestra, Theater, and Visual Arts.  

1. Band: Students learn about music through the performance of wind or percussion instruments in Concert  and Symphonic Band, and march in select parades and football games.
2. Choir: Students learn about music through the performance of vocal music in Highlander Choir, Tartan Choir and Treble Choir
3. Orchestra: Students learn about music through the performance of violin, viola, cello and bass in String Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra
4. Theater: Students learn about all aspects of putting on a theater production, whether it is performing as an actor, dancer or building the sets and lighting the stage.  There is a class for everyone.
5. Visual Art students learn about art through the  process of art creation in a variety of media including drawing, painting, metals, ceramics, crafts,  photography, and digital art .

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Mathematics

Curriculum Overview:  The MTSD mathematics curriculum ensures all students develop the behaviors and habits of mind necessary to be mathematically proficient and engage in deep mathematical understanding. To develop the necessary behaviors and habits of mind, MTSD math teachers use the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Mission of Math in MTSD: Together, we inspire students to gain an understanding and appreciation of mathematics that lasts a lifetime and evolves to meet the changing demands they will experience in life to shape our ever-changing world.

Vision of Math in MTSD: Empowering all math students to become accurate, efficient, engaged and flexible problem-solvers.

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Physical Education & Wellness

Curriculum Overview:  Physical education is a sequential curriculum designed to develop motor skills, knowledge, and behaviors for mental and emotional health and active healthy living. Physical education contributes to the development of physical literacy, which is defined as an individual having the motivation, confidence, physical competence, knowledge, and understanding to value and take responsibility for purposeful engagement in physical activity for the development of the whole person throughout their lifespan. Beyond creating physically literate individuals, physical education is a subject supporting learning in all academic areas as evidence affirms participation in physical education improves concentration and memory, increases problem-solving abilities, enhances social and emotional learning, and fosters positive relationships. 

-Adapted from Wisconsin State Standards for Physical Education

Each physical education class is graded based upon six categories; participation, effort, self direction, self control, respect, and understanding. 

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Science

Curriculum Overview:  Science is an academic discipline encompassing the study of the natural world including engineering applications, understanding problem-solving and design thinking within the human built world. Engineering ideas encompass the interactions of science, technology, and society and provide an important foundation to prepare students for post-secondary education, careers, and community involvement.

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Social Studies

Curriculum Overview:  Social studies is the integrated study of economics, geography, history, political science, and the behavioral sciences of psychology, sociology, and anthropology to promote civic competence. This area of study provides an important foundation to prepare students to become engaged, informed participants committed to the ideas and values of our democratic republic, able to apply the skills of inquiry, collaboration, decision making, and problem solving (adapted from the National Council for the Social Studies definition).  Students will become civically-engaged problem-solvers who critically examine their roles in local, regional, state, national, and global communities. Through the study and application of the individual disciplines of social studies (behavioral sciences, economics, geography, history, and political science), students become lifelong learners able to collaborate and thrive in our interdependent world.

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World Languages

Curriculum Overview:  The mission of the Mequon-Thiensville School District World Language Program is to equip all students with transferable skills that encourage them to recognize, respect and respond to cultural perspectives while inspiring a passion to investigate the world as informed global citizens. The World Language Department embraces its mission statement and offers students the opportunity to learn three of the official languages used by the United Nations: Chinese, French and Spanish, in addition to a time-honored classical language, Latin.

Click the cards below to view the Scope & Sequence for each course.