8th Grade Language Arts
Welcome to 8th Grade Language Arts!
In 8th grade Language Arts, we do a review of grammatical concepts already learned and add verbals, clauses, and phrases to mix. We continue to work on our writing skills using 6 Traits of Good Writing in persuasive, narrative, and informational writing genres. In addition, we practice nonfiction reading strategies.
Finally, we introduce some of the strategies/skills that our local high schools will use with students when they become 9th graders.
Week of 8/24/20
Over the past two weeks, we have reviewed the 6 Traits of Writing, simple, compound, complex, compound-complex sentences, and prepositional phrases. We also reviewed the difference between using direct quotes and paraphrasing as evidence in support of our claims and wrote our paragraphs using CQC (Claim, Quote, Commentary) format. This is the format used by several of our local high schools, so hopefully, the kids will leave SLS with lots of exposure and practice with it.
This week we look at finding subjects and verbs in sentences. We will also begin our first group research project/presentation of the year using the research skills that we covered last week. Since we are living in a time of unique history with the pandemic, we are going to create some short documentaries using primary and secondary sources of information to record the impacts that COVID 19 has had in many areas of our lives. We will interview people, research credible sources, and use our own experiences in this project. I will also ask the kids to reflect upon how our Catholic faith has helped them throughout these difficult times. I am attaching a link for the project guidelines below. Most of the work for this project will take place at school, and we will try to share our finished presentations with you.