Middle School

In 6th-8th grade at OAO, students are focused upon the development of logic and reason and the beginnings of oratory and argumentation, both in debate and in essays and other written examples of ordered thinking.

The focus on constructing logical arguments matches their natural inclinations at that age to engage in debate and discussion and challenges them to support and defend their assertions and observations.

As in the early grades, Optima Academy Online seeks to instill virtue at all times and in every lesson, and in our older grade levels, while still practicing self-governance, scholars (that’s what we call our students) will engage the idea of virtue in the abstract for the first time, and will be asked to find evidence of virtue in literature and art, in the lives of great thinkers and scientists, and encouraged to seek it for themselves.