Northwoods Middle School strives to prepare students for college, careers, and to to be contributing members of society by infusing the elements found in the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. Each day we work to provide a safe, caring, and academically challenging learning environment where all students can achieve success. Northwoods Middle School continues to work towards making gains in student achievement by providing effective professional learning community opportunities for teachers, targeted professional development activities that provide teachers additional resources to support student learning, and implementing rigorous curriculum and academic expectations. We use a variety of student-centered approaches to facilitate student growth and accelerate student performance.
Northwoods Middle School has been able to provide students with opportunities for high school credits in Honors Algebra I, Honors English I, and Spanish, along with exposure to Project Lead the Way courses, reading and mathematics interventions, after-school enrichment, digital content, arts-infused project-based learning, and extracurricular activities. Additionally, our teachers are always seeking to learn new and effective strategies to use in the classroom by attending weekly professional development and sharing common planning periods with each other. Our primary focus is to improve the percentage of students who are reading on and above grade level, so we are implementing several strategies targeted to improving student achievement in reading. We are an early adopter of the EL curriculum, we utilize Read 180 with students who are close to grade level to help accelerate their learning, and offer students interventions in reading daily. We also have a trained Master Reading Teacher who works with students to improve their reading skills as measured on the MAP assessment.
We are continuously working to make steady progress academically, but we have also made huge strides in changing the climate and culture of the school by immersing student’s day-to-day activities in creativity and innovation, even during the pandemic. While our population continues to grow, our discipline has decreased with the assistance of Restorative Practices, PBIS, and Second Steps. Students are taking ownership of their behaviors and utilizing effective conflict resolution strategies. This promotes critical thinking as a way to solve problems and improve communication skills.
We can proudly say that Northwoods Middle School has the best students and staff. Our stakeholders believe that the school, family, and community must share the educational responsibility for all of our students. We are confident that if we work together, our students will have a strong foundation and necessary support in order to achieve academic success throughout their educational journey.
Dr. Keturah Gadson, Principal
Ms. Zenovia Dixon, School Improvement Council Chairperson
