Throughout the year, grade 7/8 students will develop their reading, writing, thinking and speaking skills as we explore the elements of literature through various short stories, novels, and non-fiction, drama and poetry pieces. Students will be expected to interact with the texts in a variety of ways including reading logs. Students will develop their vocabulary as we go through word work from the literature pieces as well as their independent reading novels.
Students will be engaged in developing their writing abilities as we work through the writing process to produce various pieces such as personal narratives, descriptive essays, and short stories. Their grasp of the writing conventions and grammatical usage will be reinforced and expanded, and they will be expected to demonstrate this in their writing.
Summary of Topics/ Units
Writing Units – Narrative: Personal & Mystery Story
Expository: Personal Newspaper, Original Recipe, Lego Construction
Descriptive: Poetry Portfolio
Persuasive: Dragons' Den
Reading Comprehension: Activate prior knowledge, make connections, ask questions, make predictions, inferring, visualizing, determining important ideas, synthesizing & monitoring and repairing comprehension.
Figurative/Systematic Language: Alliterations, Similes, Personifications, Hyperboles, Metaphors, Foreshadowing, Symbolism, Irony, Idioms & Onomatopoeias.
Word work: Choice board.
Media: Newspaper, Magazine, Movie Poster, Advertisements, File Reviews, App Design
Assessment
Academic grades for this course will be determined by students’ performance on end of unit or summative assessments such as tests, essays, presentations and projects in writing, grammar, literature/comprehension tests, vocabulary and spelling. Grades will be assigned in the skill areas of the unit rubric. The skill areas and their weighting are Knowledge & Comprehension (25%), Communication (25 %), Reasoning/ Analysis (25%), and Application and (25%).