English Language Arts 8th Grade

Course Overview

In Grade 8, English Language Arts serves as the culmination of students’ middle school literacy learning and an important bridge to high school. Students engage with increasingly complex texts that invite them to explore meaningful questions about identity, belonging, society, and the stories we leave behind. As readers, we consistently move beyond analyzing what a text explicitly and implicitly says to considering how and why authors make purposeful rhetorical choices. As writers, students develop more sustained and sophisticated pieces, using strong evidence and thoughtful analysis while continuing to refine their individual voices. Throughout the year, discussion, research, and connections to the world beyond the classroom encourage students to think critically and take greater ownership of their learning. With continued guidance, practice, and feedback, students leave 8th grade prepared for the increased independence and expectations of high school English.

About Our Curriculum

The curriculum for each English course is continually reviewed and revised to ensure every student receives an engaging, rigorous learning experience aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy.

Course teams meet regularly to review student learning and make informed adjustments to curriculum and instruction to meet their students' unique needs and strengths. While teachers collaborate to establish shared learning experiences with core content, essential skills, and common outcomes within each course, we also intentionally preserve flexibility for teachers to tailor select texts, assignments, and learning experiences and to adjust unit sequencing or instructional approaches as appropriate.

For this reason, the unit overviews on this site represent the course's shared learning goals and experiences; specific texts, assignments, and sequencing may vary by teacher and class section. Please check your teacher's Schoology page regularly for the most current information about your student's class, including upcoming novel and media selections.

Thank you!

Ms. Crystal Laliberte, MA, CAGS
English Curriculum Coordinator, Grades 6–12

The Craft Behind the Story

Learning Targets

By the end of this unit, students will know and be able to:

Cite and analyze the textual evidence that most strongly supports an interpretation, including evidence that supports inferences about a text.
Analyze how authors use structure, characterization, dialogue, imagery, symbolism, irony, foreshadowing, mood, and other craft choices to develop meaning and shape a reader's experience.
Explain how specific words, phrases, literary techniques, and structural choices contribute to meaning, tone, mood, and style.
Develop analytical writing with a clear claim, well-chosen evidence, and reasoning that explains how the evidence supports the interpretation.
Build on others' ideas in collaborative discussions, clearly communicating interpretations and supporting them with relevant textual evidence.
Craft and revise a multi-page narrative using purposeful structure, literary techniques, descriptive details, and precise language to engage readers and develop experiences, events, and characters.

Essential Questions

How do an author's choices about craft and structure shape a reader's experience?
How do writers use literary techniques to develop meaning, mood, character, and theme?
How can close reading help us understand why an author made particular choices?
How can writers apply techniques observed in literature to strengthen their own narratives?

Instructional Snapshot

To meet the learning targets, students will:

Read and annotate varied short narratives and narrative poetry, such as "The Landlady," "The Highwayman," and "The Bracelet," to examine story elements and authors' craft.
Analyze how authors use structure, characterization, dialogue, foreshadowing, irony, mood, symbolism, imagery, and other techniques to shape meaning and reader response.
Practice selecting strong textual evidence and explaining the relationship among evidence, authorial choices, and interpretation.
Develop increasingly sophisticated analytical paragraphs using CLEAR and Writing Revolution strategies to organize, expand, and elaborate ideas.
Discuss model texts in whole-class, small-group, and partner settings, building on peers' ideas and supporting interpretations with evidence.
Plan, draft, and revise a multi-page narrative that applies purposeful craft and structural techniques studied in mentor texts.

Community and Group Membership

Learning Targets

By the end of this unit, students will know and be able to:

Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports analysis of characters, relationships, conflicts, themes, and inferences within a complex work of realistic fiction.
Determine a theme and analyze its development through characters, setting, plot, dialogue, and significant incidents across a text.
Analyze how particular incidents, interactions, and lines of dialogue reveal character, propel the action, or provoke important decisions.
Analyze how authors develop complex ideas about identity, belonging, conformity, privilege, loyalty, and community through literary choices.
Compare a literary text with its film adaptation, evaluating how a director's choices remain faithful to or depart from the original and how those choices affect meaning.
Develop a sustained literary analysis that establishes a clear claim and supports it with logically organized reasoning, well-chosen textual evidence, and relevant analysis.

Essential Questions

How can conforming to group expectations shape an individual's identity and relationships?
How can privilege, or the appearance of privilege, influence how people see themselves and others?
What do individuals gain and sacrifice through membership in a community?
How do relationships and social expectations influence the choices people make?
How can authors use characters and conflicts to explore larger ideas about identity, belonging, and community?

Instructional Snapshot

To meet the learning targets, students will:

Read and closely analyze a realistic fiction novel, such as S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders, with attention to character, conflict, theme, identity, belonging, and community.
Analyze significant incidents and character development using strategies such as fiction signposts and STEAL while moving toward increasingly independent interpretation.
Read related nonfiction and poetry to broaden and complicate the unit's exploration of identity, privilege, conformity, relationships, and belonging.
Compare the novel with a film adaptation, such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, evaluating the impact of choices made by the author and director.
Participate in Socratic and collaborative discussions that require preparation, relevant evidence, active listening, and meaningful responses to others' ideas.
Develop and revise a multi-paragraph literary analysis with an introduction, focused body paragraphs, well-chosen evidence and reasoning, and a purposeful conclusion.

The Future of Society

Learning Targets

By the end of this unit, students will know and be able to:

Determine and analyze how dystopian literature develops social commentary about contemporary or enduring issues through imagined societies.
Analyze how theme, symbolism, allusion, archetypes, propaganda, setting, conflict, and other literary choices contribute to a text's meaning and critique of society.
Cite the strongest textual evidence to support interpretations and explain the significance of details, patterns, symbols, and allusions within a text.
Compare ideas and perspectives across dystopian literature and relevant nonfiction to examine relationships between imagined societies and real-world concerns.
Develop an argument using clear claims, logical reasoning, relevant evidence, and credible research.
Present a persuasive argument in a focused, coherent manner, using effective organization, evidence, reasoning, language, and delivery appropriate to audience and purpose.

Essential Questions

How can imagined societies help us examine problems within our own?
How do dystopian authors use fictional worlds to comment on real social, political, or technological concerns?
How can symbols, allusions, archetypes, and depictions of propaganda deepen a work's social commentary?
What happens when individual freedom conflicts with the expectations or interests of society?
How can writers and speakers use evidence and rhetoric to persuade an audience about an issue that matters?

Instructional Snapshot

To meet the learning targets, students will:

Read a dystopian novel and short fiction, such as "The Lottery," "Ponies," and "The Perfect Match," examining how imagined societies develop social commentary.
Analyze dystopian features and literary concepts such as symbolism, allusion, archetype, propaganda, setting, conflict, and theme.
Participate in book-group discussions that require students to support interpretations, respond to peers, and refine ideas as their reading develops.
Research credible nonfiction sources connected to the social issues or commentary raised by their dystopian texts.
Synthesize evidence from literature and nonfiction to connect fictional social commentary with contemporary or enduring real-world concerns.
Write, refine, and deliver a persuasive speech that advances a clear claim supported by logical reasoning, relevant evidence, and purposeful rhetorical choices.

Our Legacy: Sharing our Stories

Learning Targets

By the end of this unit, students will know and be able to:

Analyze how memoirists use point of view, structure, chronology, dialogue, sensory detail, tone, and reflection to shape meaning and communicate significant experiences.
Analyze how particular incidents and interactions reveal character and contribute to a character arc or developing understanding of self.
Evaluate how choices in narrative structure, including chronology, flashback, pacing, and shifts in time, influence a reader's understanding of experiences and their significance.
Analyze the impact of first-person perspective, precise language, sensory details, and tone on a memoir's meaning and reader response.
Examine how memoirists select and shape memories to communicate larger ideas about identity, growth, relationships, belonging, and legacy.
Craft and revise a multi-page memoir using purposeful narrative structure, dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and sensory language to communicate the significance of an experience.

Essential Questions

What makes a memory significant enough to preserve and share?
How do writers transform personal memories into meaningful stories?
How do perspective and reflection shape the way we understand past experiences?
How do choices about structure, detail, dialogue, and tone influence the way a reader experiences a memoir?
What can the stories we choose to tell reveal about our identities, growth, and values?
What stories do we want to carry forward as part of our legacy?

Instructional Snapshot

To meet the learning targets, students will:

Read and analyze varied short memoirs, such as "Fish Cheeks," "I Was Crumbling on the Inside," "Us and Them," and excerpts from I Am Malala, alongside a full-length choice memoir.
Examine how memoirists use point of view, character arc, dialogue, sensory detail, tone, reflection, pacing, and shifts in time to communicate the significance of lived experiences.
Participate in book-group and collaborative discussions that compare authorial choices across shared and independently selected memoirs.
Use close reading and annotation to connect specific craft choices to an author's purpose, perspective, and larger ideas about identity and experience.
Generate and develop possible memoir topics through reflection, flash drafting, Writing Revolution strategies, and study of mentor texts.
Plan, draft, revise, and edit a multi-page memoir reflecting on students' own middle school experiences and emerging sense of legacy.

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