Course Description:

8th grade Language Arts is a comprehensive exploration of reading, writing, communication and research. Students will work collaboratively and independently to improve their skills in these standard areas, as well as to develop confidence and competence in their work and critical thinking. Content will vary, but all students will be developing proficiency of the CDE/Common Core standards for 8th grade.

Every class period students will be engaged in a variety of reading experiences. Additionally, students will participate in reading whole class novels and literature circles. We will interact with several genres and use our reading as mentor texts for our writing and tools for our vocabulary acquisition.  

Students will compose in-class writing warm ups to strengthen stamina, practice grammar and vocabulary skills, and generate ideas for larger writing pieces. Over the course of the year, students will develop a variety of shorter pieces in the three major genres: narrative, informative and argumentative writing.  We will review grammar/usage/mechanic (GUM) skills we already know and practice new skills that are introduced in class. Students will apply the GUM skills to all writing. Students will be encouraged to "play" with language and incorporate new vocabulary in their writing across content areas.