Overview

Writing | Reading | Grammar | Vocabulary

Eighth grade students study works by American writers that complement the concepts and themes found in their American history class.

WRITING

Students will be able to write multi-paragraph analytical essays as well as responsive journal entries, creative poems, plays, and short stories.

• Examine the structure of the five-paragraph essay.
• Reinforce the writing of effective thesis statements.
• Review the difference between summary, paraphrase, and analysis.
• Expand on the elements of the analytical essay
• Develop awareness of writing for a specific audience.
• Expand on pre-writing techniques: block outline, looping, venn diagram, and webbing.
• Expand on ways to organize different types of essays (multi-paragraph essays).
• Introduce the following ways to "hook" the reader in the introduction: Pose a question, relate an anecdote, state an intriguing or startling fact, or present a quotation.
• Review the functions of topic sentences and concluding sentences in body paragraphs.
• Expand on ways to support opinions with details from the text or outside sources.
• Review the correct documentation of internal citations.
• Introduce methods of leading into textual quotations that are used as supporting details.
• Develop the craft of writing strong analytical commentary to fully develop ideas.
• Expand on writing smooth transitions between paragraphs.
• Introduce ways to broaden concluding paragraphs by moving from specific to general.
• Develop sentence variety.
• Expand on the use of vivid, appropriate, and mature vocabulary in writing.
• Introduce strategies for showing and not telling.
• Reinforce strategies for writing timed essays.
• Encourage and develop written reader responses in journal writing.
• Reinforce note-taking skills.

• The analytical essay on a piece of Literature
• The comparison/contrast essay
• The personal experience narrative
• The timed in-class essay
• Emulation of different writers’ styles (Poe, Cisneros, Langston Hughes)
• The Elizabethan sonnet
• Free verse poetry
• Play writing
• Journal writing (reader response and historical diaries)
• Short story writing

• Graded rubrics evaluating specific writing skills
• Student/teacher writing conferences
• Peer response
• Teacher response followed by student revision

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Students will be able to closely read a piece of literature, to analyze it; and to make historical, personal, and literary connections.

Students will continue to develop the habit of reading for pleasure.

• Make and use book notes.
• Identify complex themes and make historical, personal, and literary connections.
• Identify the types of conflicts.
• Identify methods of characterization.
• Identify flat, round, static, and dynamic characters.
• Identify the methods of building suspense.
• Understand the limitations and advantages of the writer’s choice of point of view (first person, third person limited, third person omniscient).
• Understand symbolism, irony (verbal and dramatic), satire, mood, tone, and attitude
• Identify the following literary devices: alliteration, allusion, assonance, flashback, foreshadowing, free verse, iambic pentameter, simile, extended metaphor, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, personification, pun, soliloquy, and vignette.
• Understand the concept of mixed voice in a personal experience narrative (adult reflecting on youth).
• Share personal insights and reactions to literary works by developing the following seminar discussion skills: listening to others and responding appropriately to specific points by either building on those points or respectfully disagreeing with a contrary view.

All students are required to read Tangerine by Edward Bloor and to read one other book of choice from the eighth grade section of the Cary Academy Middle School Summer Reading Booklet.

• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Romeo and Juliet (or another play) by William Shakespeare
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets #18, #29, and #130
• "The Masque of the Red Death," Cask of Amontallado", "The Raven," and "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe
• "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
• "Salvation" by Langston Hughes
• Junior Great Books—Series 8
• Characters in Conflict (short story collection) by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
• Impact (50 Short Short Stories) by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
• Excerpts from the following:
• Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words
• Letters from Fifka by Karen Hesse
• The Diary of LaToya Hunter
• Dear America: So Far from Home by Mary Driscoll
• Growing Up Ethnic In America by Mary Driscoll

All students are required to read 15 minutes or more per night in a book of their choice from a teacher recommended list.

• Participation in class discussions (seminars led by teacher)
• Group work in literary discussion circles (student led)
• Study guide questions (homework)
• Objective tests and quizzes (reading for comprehension)
• Subjective tests (short answer and essays of various lengths and types--analysis of a character etc.)
• Outside reading journals
• Projects (power point, web page, book cover, models)
• Class presentations

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Students will be able to recognize and to apply more complex rules of agreement, usage, pronoun case, and advanced punctuation. They will be able to edit and to proofread their own work and that of their peers.

• Review the parts of speech.
• Review clauses (dependent and independent) and phrases.
• Review sentence fragments, run-ons, and comma splices.
• Expand on the correct use of the comma, the semicolon, the colon, the dash, the apostrophe, and quotation marks.
• Develop awareness of verb tense agreement, pronoun case, and possessives.

• Grammar and Language Workbook Grade 8 by Glencoe McGraw-Hill

• Objective tests and quizzes
• Graded rubric for mechanics in writing assignments
• Peer editing

Students will expand their reading, writing, and speaking vocabulary. They will develop an awareness of the connotations of words and the importance of word choice.

• Recognize new words in reading.
• Use new words in writing and speaking.

• Recognize and use different forms of a word.
• Recognize synonyms and antonyms.
• Understand and create word analogies.

• Advancing Vocabulary Skills by Townsend Press

• Objective tests and quizzes
• Required use of vocabulary in writing assignments

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