Our umbrella topic for the whole year is: What is a system? What happens when a system does not function properly? With this “big idea” in mind, our fall semester will tackle an important Mal-function in our US social/historical system: what brought about the Civil Rights Movement? Once we look into the historical origins of the Civil Rights Movement, we will begin to learn about, evaluate, compare and empathize with multiple perspectives of people involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Historical fiction novels will be integrated based on the REACH curriculum. Content based non-fiction reading and reading strategies will be taught as well as a variety of related topics. Content writing will be woven in, although writing itself will be a separate class. We will be working on organizational skills and strategies, conduct class meetings and support each other as a community. Spring topics will be science systems.