Takoma Park Middle School

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Takoma Park Middle School
Ad Astra (To the stars!)
Established	1940^[1]
School type	Public Middle School
Grades	6 to 8
Principal	Renay Johnson
Location	Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Students	984 (as of 2005)
Mascot	Blue Devil
District	Montgomery County Public Schools
Website	TPMS

Takoma Park Middle School is a middle school (grades 6-8) in Takoma Park in unincorporated Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, and part of the Montgomery County Public Schools district. As of 2005, its enrollment was 984.

Most of the city of Takoma Park is assigned to this school.

1 Campus
2 Academics
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Campus

TPMS is currently located at 7611 Piney Branch Road, Takoma Park, MD 20910. Its current building supersedes the former Takoma Park Middle School building, built March 15, 1940. The building is composed of three floors, with two gymnasiums and a cafeteria. The first, second, and third floors contain the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, respectively. There is a parking lot and a bus lane directly in front of the building; the bus lane has spaces for nine buses. In the rear, there are four basketball courts and four tennis courts. Two of the tennis courts are unused, and contained two portable classrooms until 2006. The school makes use of the Lee Jordan field, consisting of two baseball/softball diamonds and a soccer/football field, surrounded by a track approximately one quarter mile in length.

[edit] Academics

Takoma Park Middle School (TPMS) is a middle school with a Math/Science/Computer Science magnet program integrated into the school. Students in the magnet program take advanced classes in math, science, and computer science. Math topics generally include Pre-Algebra (a.k.a. Investigation into Mathematics) for the sixth grade magnet students, Algebra 1 for the seventh graders, and Geometry for the eighth grade students. In the sixth grade magnet computer science classes, students are taught the basics of Microsoft Office, including Excel, Access, and Powerpoint, as well as basics for the programming language, TrueBASIC. Seventh grade computer science topics include more advanced TrueBASIC programming, and creating basic web sites in HTML. JavaScript and further TrueBASIC skills are taught in magnet eigth grade computer science classes. Teachers previously taught a language known as Logo. In 2005, four students from Takoma achieved perfect scores on the AMC 8, tying the school with First Colony Middle School for the most perfect scores from a single school. One of TPMS's after-school classes is MathCounts, which participates in competitions at the chapter, state, and national level periodically. Their team has come in first place at the state level competition since MathCounts was founded in 1983.