Nauset Middle School’s 8th Grade English department works from a humanities approach to blend literature with nonfiction, history and social context. Critical thinking is built into literary units anchored in key themes: understanding human behavior, realization of the American Dream, and finally, human rights and societies. Focus skills addressed include text-based analysis, inferring/interpreting, evaluating, evidence-supported thinking, oral communication, collaboration/discussion, analytical writing, creative writing, reflective writing, and revising/editing. Genres studied include short stories, poetry, drama, novels, memoir, film, documentary and video, speeches, and informational text. While short stories by Ray Bradbury, Walter Dean Myers, and Cynthia Rawlett, among others, encompass the genre of the short story, classics studied include multiple readings by Edgar Allan Poe, which reinforce the genre while studying elements of Gothic Romanticism. Students engage in close readings of contemporary poetry by Ocean Vuong, Yusef Kommenyaaka, Joy Harjo, and Wislawa Szymborska, among other poets, to further reinforce themes related to humanity and society. Additionally, humanities are continually addressed throughout the year with core texts such as Lorraine Hansbery’s A Raisin in the Sun, a unit on literature of the Holocaust, culminating the year in a final unit on dystopian fiction.
Below are links to some of our curricular resources: