Teacher Guidance

Support resource for teaching the Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE)

The grades six through eight standards define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. Instruction in grades 6-8 addresses students’ increasing maturity and the growing sophistication of their abilities, culminating in the development by the end of grade 8 of students who are ready to succeed in high school. Students should be able to comprehend more challenging books and articles, basing all of their analyses, inferences, and claims on explicit and relevant evidence from the texts. Students will expand on their ability to identify central ideas by identifying how those themes are shaped and conveyed by particular details. Their analysis of basic literary elements will extend to identifying connections and complexities within narratives and how individual elements weave together to advance plot and reveal character. The evaluation of the impact of language on tone and meaning will begin to include more sophisticated concepts such as analogy and allusion, subtleties in point of view such as dramatic irony, and a more sophisticated appreciation for connotative diction. These skills will be incorporated into the students’ own narrative and expository writing. Students will become increasingly adept at understanding an author’s biases, the use of complex rhetorical devices including logical fallacies, and tailoring their own prose for maximum influence. While continuing with a variety of literary non-fiction, students in grades 6-8 will begin to tackle more technical informational texts as well. Literary selections will include foundational materials from mythology, cultural histories, and religious traditions.

*Taken from the Teacher Guidance Document (pg 2).