8th Grade ELA

Welcome to 8th grade ELA! As you can imagine, this is a very important year for ELA. With high school coming next year, there are a lot of skills that need to be developed so you will be prepared for it, no matter which school you choose to go to.

All year there will be a focus on increasing your reading volume and skill. We will work on improving our reading by, well, reading. A lot. The bottom line is that reading ability is the number one predictor of future success. I want all of my students to have the skills to succeed, now and in the future.

We will also be doing a fair amount of writing. We start the year with a narrative writing unit that will result in the creation of your own children's book. Then we will focus more on writing about reading during our dystopian unit. When we return from Christmas break we will begin our Holocaust unit which will culminate in the writing of a research paper. After the Holocaust we will do some persuasive writing. This unit is also helpful because it will help you learn how to construct arguments and win. If the circumstances are right, we will have a debate. The year will finish with poetry, historically EVERYONE'S favorite writing unit.