Grade 8
Language Arts 3
Maybe change would not be hard if we knew where it was all going. This course is not about telling fortunes, but it is about seeing how people and ideas have changed. It is also about discovering which ideas have lasting value for each student.
Books, poems, and songs are filled with stories about people discovering the world around them and the world inside them. Authors share their reflections about how people respond to changes and challenges. In this course, students encounter the many faces of change. They are also challenged to define and describe their own place in a changing world.
The purpose of this course is to give students the tools to understand and express who they are and where they want to go. By the end of the course, each student’s portfolio of writings will provide a descriptive self-portrait of a young adult growing up.
Major Topics and Concepts
- Text connections
- Identifying theme
- Moving a story forward
- How theme develops
- Comparing and contrasting mediums
- Using context clues
- Thesaurus and dictionary skills
- Implicit and explicit meaning
- Finding the main idea
- Writing an effective summary
- Assess internet sources
- Why writers choose words
- Reading informational texts
- Researching and organizing information
- Avoiding plagiarism/citing sources
- Structure of a text
- Writing an effective summary
- Identifying conflicting points of view
- Using supporting evidence
- Using correct spelling
- Capitalization rules
- Presenting information in different mediums
- Evaluating modes of communication
- Analyzing theme
- Greek and Latin roots and affixes
- Figurative language
- How words affect meaning and tone
- Syntax and diction
Advance
- Historical context
- Analyzing style
- Writing in a different genre
- Analyzing poem structure
- Effect of poem structure on meaning
- Diction and poetic devices
- How authors create meaning and tone
