• English 8     ENGLISH 8

    In the language arts curriculum students will review areas of vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, writing skills, reading comprehension, literary analysis, and critical thinking.

    In the grammar and punctuation strand, students will work on sentence structure, dependent and independent clauses, and examine parts of speech (including verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions, etc.)

    Students will learn to identify the main idea of a passage, paraphrase and summarize reading material in order to enhance their reading comprehension.

    Writing will be developed through structured and independent work closely connected to the other skills being taught in middle school language arts. Students will use outlining and mapping techniques to assist with organizing and developing their writing pieces.

    In the literary analysis strand, students will perform a variety of activities during their reading assignments; and learn to identify genre, voice, point of view, and mood.

     Students will learn to distinguish between fact and opinion, cause and effect, fantasy and reality.

    In the critical thinking strand, students will be challenged to think critically as they analyze, and learn to distinguish fact from opinion and work with metaphors, similes and analogies.