Grades 6-8: Fishtank Curriculum

Cambridge Public Schools uses Fishtank ELA in Grades 6-8. This high quality curriculum is designed to develop students’ critical thinking, reading, writing and oracy skills. In every unit, students engage in rigorous instruction that addresses vocabulary, reading, oracy, and writing assignments across literary genres. Each unit is developed around a topic that connects to a yearlong theme. 

Grade 6: Coming of Age: Texts feature protagonists from diverse backgrounds, places, and time periods, all of whom face challenges as they struggle to define their identities and claim their place in the world.  Texts include (but are not limited to): Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice; The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963; The Giver; The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees; and more. 

• Across these units, students deepen their writing skills through argumentative, informational, and narrative tasks, and continue to build their academic vocabularies, speaking and listening skills, and social-emotional competencies.

• Throughout the course, students address all ELA Standards as they engage with increasingly complex texts, participate in class discussions, and write daily. Each unit helps build students’ knowledge and understanding of the world around them through thematically organized core and supplemental texts, embedded writing instruction and extended writing assignments in response to Essential Questions, and daily opportunities to engage in multiple tiers of academic discourse. 

Grade 7: Belonging: Texts address diverse aspects around the concept of belonging. Students think deeply about the complex past, present, and future of America, and how to define their ever-changing identity as a nation. Texts include (but are not limited to): The Outsiders, A Raisin in the Sun, The House on Mango Street Cisneros, American Born Chinese; and more.

• Through these texts, students will think deeply about the complex past, present, and future of America, and how to define their ever-changing identity as a nation. Across the 6 units, students deepen their writing skills through argumentative, informational, and narrative tasks, and continue to build their academic vocabularies, speaking and listening skills, and social-emotional competencies.

• Throughout the course, students address all ELA Standards as they engage with increasingly complex texts, participate in class discussions, and write daily. Each unit helps build students’ knowledge and understanding of the world around them through thematically organized core and supplemental texts, embedded writing instruction and extended writing assignments in response to Essential Questions, and daily opportunities to engage in multiple tiers of academic discourse.

Grade 8: Justice: Students consider how access to power influences human behavior and how everyday people respond in the face of injustice and oppression. They contemplate their power as young people to create the future they wish to see. Texts include (but are not limited to): All American Boys, The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, The 57 Bus, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood; and more.

• Across these units, students deepen their writing skills through argumentative, informational, and narrative tasks, and continue to build their academic vocabularies, speaking and listening skills, and social-emotional competencies.

• Throughout the course, students address all ELA Standards as they engage with increasingly complex texts, participate in class discussions, and write daily. Each unit helps build students’ knowledge and understanding of the world around them through thematically organized core and supplemental texts, embedded writing instruction and extended writing assignments in response to Essential Questions, and daily opportunities to engage in multiple tiers of academic discourse. 

After completing the 8th grade ELA course, students will have the reading, writing, and speaking / listening skills, and the relevant background knowledge to set them up for success in high school and beyond.