English Grade 8

November 3, 2015

Dear Parents:

As promised, here is the first update from your child's eighth grade English class. I send these updates periodically because it is often difficult for parents to elicit information from their children about school other than that it's "fine." So my aim here is to give you a taste of what we're learning, doing, and thinking about in class.

Our literature during the first quarter has consisted of The Crossover, Of Mice and Men, and a variety of short stories and films. Through these texts, we have been learning to identify and admire an author's use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony, among other narrative tools. As we discuss our texts, it’s exciting to see how many examples of these techniques the students notice and how eager they are to uncover the "behind-the-scenes" strategy of the author or screenwriter. Our viewing of the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last" proved particularly engaging, prompting the students to apply literary analysis to TV shows and movies as well as their independently chosen books.

Our work with Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men has also given us an opportunity to explore and debate a series of moral dilemmas: Should we always try to end suffering, even if we can't obtain the consent of the person (or animal) who seems to be suffering? Is it admirable to lie in order to protect someone we respect? Can we ever help a person by hurting them? The students have risen to the challenge that these “deep” topics offer, and it’s clear that they appreciate being entrusted with such conversations.

In conjunction with our literature studies, we have been focusing on how to structure our writing to maximize our readers' understanding of our message and minimize our readers' need to second-guess their assumptions about what we're writing. The first goal requires carefully coordinated thesis statements, supporting points, and explanations of how the evidence is relevant, while the second goal requires clear and well-punctuated sentences. So far, the students have composed three formal pieces of writing in addition to other shorter assignments, most of them completed during class time so that I can support them as they plan and proofread. I assess each piece using a standards-based rubric with sections for Organization, Ideas, Grammar, Voice, and Process. Once they receive my feedback, our digital platform allows them to ask clarifying questions and initiate conversations below specific comments. The ultimate goal of the feedback is not judgment but rather learning and growth.

This year marks the debut of our grammar reference book, Write Right, which has allowed for more individualized grammar instruction based on patterns in each students’ written pieces. We also have conducted full-class grammar lessons about parts of speech, clauses, and ways to avoid run-ons, comma splices, and fragments. In addition, we have immersed ourselves in the Latin roots featured in our vocabulary book, incorporating the words and roots into our literature discussions and embedding them into our own writing.

In the coming weeks, we will work on a multi-draft essay about Of Mice and Men, which will be a valuable opportunity to synthesize everything we’ve learned so far regarding argument structure, grammar, vocabulary, and literary analysis. In December, our text will be Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, accompanied by a creative narrative writing project. After winter break, we will launch into Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Our grammar studies will continue to focus on troubleshooting and editing while also incorporating more advanced sentence terminology and theory.

Please don't hesitate to reply with any feedback or questions you might have about our English course. And thank you for supporting your children as they work to become ever more sophisticated readers, writers, and thinkers.

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

February 1, 2016

Dear Parents:

The occasion of this week’s semester reports and conferences provides a good opportunity for me to update you about what your eighth grader has been doing in our English class.

In December, we read the contemporary classic The House on Mango Street, a novella by Sandra Cisneros consisting of a series of short poetic vignettes. These vignettes highlight the observations and experiences of a young Latina girl growing up in a poor Chicago neighborhood. We read much of the book aloud during class, which allowed us to conduct collaborative analysis of her writing technique. As we journeyed deeper into the text, we began our own original vignette composition using prompts from Cisneros’s writing (for example, beginning a vignette with the line “You lied; it wasn’t what you said at all,” and seeing where it takes us). After three “practice” vignettes and extensive peer revision sessions, each eighth grader contributed one short composition to this website. The site does not show up in search engines and is available only to those who know the address, in order to ensure privacy. I invite you to peruse these pieces using the menus in the right column, and even to comment on a few if you feel so inclined!

We are currently immersed in the famous dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. While the writing style is challenging, the plot, setting, and themes seem to be striking a chord with the students. Our in-class conversations and online discussion boards have been buzzing with commentary about whether our society in 2016 matches in any way the shallow, media-saturated, instant-gratification culture Bradbury envisioned when he published this book in 1950. We have also taken opportunities to dissect Bradbury’s use of figurative language and compose some of our own imitation similes and metaphors. These two strands of analysis will culminate in writing projects later this winter: the first a formal analytical essay, the second an action narrative.

Along the way, we have continued to incorporate word lists from Vocabulary from Classical Roots into our writing and storytelling, and we have begun a study of dependent (subordinate) clauses and how their function within a sentence dictates where to place commas and where to leave them out. And in coordination with our Innovation Coach, Ms. Ashley, we all have signed up for accounts on the website Goodreads in order to provide a platform for our book reviews and connect with classmates who share similar independent reading interests. The website also generates book recommendations for each user based on titles they have already rated. Ms. Ashley has worked to ensure that our accounts are set to the most private settings so that our identities and reading interests are visible and searchable only within the Potomac eighth grade community.

In the coming weeks, we will finish reading Fahrenheit 451 and compose the two aforementioned pieces to practice both our narrative writing and our sequential argument skills. After spring break, we will shift to an exploration of Shakespearean sonnets, followed by a comprehensive study of Romeo and Juliet featuring not only text annotation and analytical writing but also plenty of acting and directing, as well as comparative film analysis.

As always, please don’t hesitate to reply with any feedback or questions you might have about our English course. Enjoy the rest of the winter season!

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback

June 1, 2016

Dear Parents:

As we ​count down the final ​days of eighth grade with an eye toward high school, here is one last update from your child’s English class.

In late winter, we were hard at work on two pieces of writing involving Fahrenheit 451. After finishing about two-thirds of the novel, I challenged the students to imagine how they suspect the story might end and to narrate part or all of this ending in the distinctive voice of Ray Bradbury, employing his penchants for extended similes, dramatic repetition, and other literary devices. It is no exaggeration to say that a number of our students’ endings were more exciting and thought-provoking than Bradbury’s own, and it was often hard to tell that an eighth grader was the author!

The other piece of writing was a multi-draft analytical essay on a Fahrenheit-related topic of the student’s choice. Students wrote about addiction to technology, competing definitions of happiness, the brainwashing of children, the value of figurative language, and comparisons of the novel to other familiar dystopian epics, among other topics. Along the way, we worked intensively on key elements of argument construction and common difficulties in crafting multi-paragraph essays. The biggest challenge for most eighth graders involves coordinating their thesis with their examples and being clear about how each piece of specific evidence is relevant and vital to the whole.

Our spring months have​ focused on Shakespearean texts: first sonnets and then Romeo and Juliet.

​After in-depth group explorations of a series of sonnets, we prepared to compose our own by examining the subtle characteristics we found in all of the samples: increasingly complex metaphors and images followed by a couplet “twist” that re-​frames the perspective without undermining the earlier lines. Once each original sonnet was complete, I deleted the poets' names and distributed them to students in a different English section. Each sonnet was then anonymously annotated by three peers, who filled the page with detailed interpretations, observations, and questions, even as the identity of the poet remained a mystery. Later, when the sonnets were returned to the students who had written them, many were excited to read about layers of meaning they hadn't even realized were there in their own work! Such is the power of collaborative literature interpretation. (It was also a great way to practice annotation strategies.)

Our class’s approach to Romeo and Juliet was based as much in theater as in literary analysis 一 that is, our scene explorations were ​usually for the express purpose of determining how an actor should recite the lines and move about the stage. As a class, we acted and directed our way through the first half of the play: the spontaneous scuffle in the streets of Verona, the tension between Juliet’s mother and nurse, the lovers’ first meeting at the party and later that night at Juliet’s window, the violent ​deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt. Along the way, we discussed the power dynamics between different characters: the servants and the noblemen (socio​-​economic), Juliet’s nurse and the Capulet family (again socio-economic), Juliet and her mother (age), and Juliet and Romeo (gender). This allowed us to build bridges between the initially unfamiliar terrain of Elizabethan England and our own culture, which of course features many of the same power dynamics. It also gave us the opportunity to apply some of the concepts from this semester's Frameworks of Identity course.​

For the second half of the play, we split into scene groups, with each pair of actors (and an occasional solo thespian) working on a key excerpt from the script as Friar Lawrence’s plans fall into disarray and Romeo and Juliet finally succumb. Over many rehearsal sessions, the students annotated their script​s​ for both meaning and stage direction, rehearsed their lines, viewed a few different film versions of their scene for inspiration, and finally worked with another group to solicit and apply feedback. For the final performances, each scene group led their peer audience to a different pre-selected area of campus: the commons, the indoor deck, the EPAC garden, hidden alcoves and stairwells... whichever location provided the most compelling backdrop for that specific moment in the play.

​To complement the scene project, each student composed a thesis-driven, three-point analytical paragraph incorporating at least one example from their assigned scene. The tightly structured requirements were designed in coordination with our Upper School English department to prepare students for the type of piece they will be composing in the early months of ninth grade. For this paragraph, our class focused on aspects such as effective transitions between points, clear links between the evidence and thesis, and conclusions that elevate the piece beyond narrow textual analysis in order to highlight some universal truth. I provided a number of in-class writing periods, which most students used not only to compose but also to consult with me and with peers about minor yet meaningful issues of word choice, phrasing, citations, and formatting.

As you can imagine, it has been great fun for me to work with this extraordinary group of students. This class consistently rises to high expectations and does so with enthusiasm and a sense of pride and accomplishment. I can’t wait to see where their energies take them in the years ahead. Until then, have a relaxing and enjoyable summer, and thank you for the opportunity to teach your children.

Sincerely,
Mike Fishback