Twin Valley School District
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Twin Valley School District is centered in Elverson, Pennsylvania. It comprises five schools, all within half an hour of each other.
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[edit] Schools
Twin Valley School District comprises:
- Twin Valley Elementary Center
- Robeson Elementary Center
- Honeybrook Elementary Center
- Twin Valley Middle School
- Twin Valley High School
The District office is found in a separate wing of the high school, which can be found sitting atop Clymer Hill. The high school and middle school are easily viewable from the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
[edit] Composition of Classes
[edit] Elementary
The elementary schools are operated in the normal system of one teacher per class teaching English, Social Studies, Science and Mathematics. The curriculum is geared towards preparing the students for the standardized tests administered in the spring. Some grades have Multi-Age options, where students from two grades are put in the same class so that the older students may teach the younger students in addition to instruction by the teacher. Multi-Age students will remain in the same class for two years. The elementary schools also offer gym, art, library, and music classes. Students go to their classes with their regular teacher at a specific time every day. They will only go one of these four classes per day, and switch classes according to a six-day cycle system. The elementary schools run from kindergarten to fifth grade.
[edit] Middle School
The Middle School uses the block schedule. Students attend three hour-and-a-half long blocks per day, along with two classes during another hour-and-a-half long period. The two forty-five-minute classes are swapped halfway through the year with a different forty-five minute period so that a student may have four electives to choose from per year. Electives include art, careers, IEP (Individualized Education Program for gifted students), gym, music (band, chorus and/or orchestra), family and consumer sciences, technology education, and a language. Languages offered are German, Spanish and Chinese. Sixth-graders must take all three languages in an exploratory class. The other three blocks are Language Arts, Mathematics and Social Studies/Science. The latter two classes are taught for half of a year each. Students attend the Middle School from sixth to eighth grade.
[edit] High School
The High School also runs on a block schedule, though it comprises four blocks a day in addition to a flex period in which a student will return to one of their classes for additional instruction depending on the day. Students are required to take English, Science, Social Studies, Math, Gym, Personal and Professional Dynamics, language classes, and Health classes in their four-year stay at the High School. Students are otherwise permitted to take multiple electives. There are at least forty electives to choose from, ranging from Agricultural Science classes to TV and Media Classes to Informational Technology classes to Yearbook and Newspaper Classes. Languages offered to students are German, French, Spanish, and Russian. Chinese is also available, however there have not been enough students interested in the past to comprise a class. Twin Valley also offers music classes including Chorus, Band, Jazz Band and Orchestra, all of which have won numerous awards throughout the county.
[edit] Grading scale
It should be noted that all schools in the Twin Valley School district run on a different grading scale than many other schools. An A at Twin Valley is limited to a 93-100% in comparison to a normal 90-100% grading system, and the lower grades (B, C, D, and F) also have significantly raised lower brackets. This means that, for example, if a student has an A in a class, it is weighted 4.0, and this is slightly more difficult to achieve at Twin Valley.
[edit] Alumni
YouTube.com founder and businessman Chad Hurley graduated from Twin Valley, where he was an Cross-country running star and computer genius. His mother, Mrs. Joann Hurley, still teaches math at the middle school.
