Oxford Middle (Oxford City) Instructional Round

April 12- Oxford Middle (Oxford City)
Grades: 7-8 for the entire district
# Students: 592
Demographics: 60% white, 25% African American, 9% Hispanic, and 6% Asian and multiracial
F/R lunch 54%
Registration: 8:15 a.m.
Begin: 8:30 p.m.
End: 2:30 p.m.
What can participants expect to see when they visit?
Our mission is to establish a strong foundation for lifelong learning and responsible citizenship for our young adolescents by providing a nurturing and challenging educational environment. Our school utilizes a modified block schedule, which allows the flexibility needed to support a student-centered system of differentiated instruction. Math and English Language Arts classes are ninety minutes in length, while science, social studies, and electives are divided into forty-five minute periods. To accommodate the various needs and interests of our students, whether they need intervention or acceleration, we offer numerous elective opportunities for students as well as a built-in enrichment period.
Oxford Middle School has recently been striving to increase our students’ ownership in their own learning. We believe it is vitally important to promote this ownership in order to help motivate and engage the students, especially during the middle school years. This school year we successfully held two Student Led Conference Days that allowed our students to share their learning and goals with parents and guardians. The students created digital portfolios that included their evidence of learning target mastery based on Common Formative Assessment results in each subject area on certain priority standards. They also discussed Interim ACT Aspire results and set goals to improve and make progress toward proficiency.
We are in the fourth year of being a part of the “CONNECT” technology initiative of the Oxford City Schools district, which provides a MacBook Air laptop computer for every OMS student to use at school and home. This access to technology has allowed our teachers to utilize a blended learning instructional approach. The students are able to be more actively engaged in their courses by practicing and perfecting their 21st century learning skills. Students can collaborate more easily with teachers and classmates using Google tools, MacBook applications, and our Blackboard learning management system.