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Welcome to 8th grade Language Arts!

Your 8th grader will be expected to do a significant amount of reading outside the classroom. In fact, nightly reading. They will read a variety of texts from a range of genres, including stories, novels, essays, poems, and plays, and they will be asked to keep a log and journal of their readings. The log will help them keep track of the 25 book reading standard. The journal will be used to record their reactions to and questions about the texts they read. A typical text might be To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee or The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros - coming of age stories in which the characters face issues and make decisions that help determine who they are and what they believe in.

As they read and discuss these texts, they will develop skills in four specific areas:

Increased Word Knowledge. Your teen will have formal vocabulary building through weekly word lists and an examination of word roots, suffixes, and prefixes. Eighth graders learn how to use context to determine the correct meaning of a word without using a dictionary.

Understanding of Increasingly Complex Texts. Your eighth grader will be reading more complex materials this year - texts that use more sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structure, deal with more sophisticated ideas and abstractions, and require readers to draw more of their own conclusions based upon "clues" in the text. Students will learn how to summarize these texts, identify and express the main idea of a passage, and identify the sequence of events in a story or article. They will also spend a significant amount of time developing critical thinking skills, and reasoning skills by learning how to use specific details from the text to support an argument or idea.

Recognition of Elements of Literature and Literary Devices. The literature eighth graders will read will be more sophisticated, so it will require a better understanding of literature to grasp meaning. Eighth graders will build upon their knowledge of the elements of literature - plot, setting, characterization, point of view, tone, symbolism, style, and theme - and learn to recognize them in increasingly complex literature. They will also learn to recognize more sophisticated literary devices, such as allusion, complex rhyme schemes, and satire while reinforcing knowledge of devices such as alliteration and figurative language.

Literary Analysis. By carefully reading and recognizing elements of literature and writing strategies, students should be able to conduct basic literary analysis to determine theme. They will be encouraged to make connections to their own lives and to historical and current situations. They will learn how to identify cause and effect relationships in a text, to predict possible outcomes of a reading situation, to compare and contrast similar aspects within a text or between two or more texts.

This year there will be a continued emphasis on writing as a process. Our writing instruction will focus on the five steps that create a final written product: pre-writing or "brainstorming" strategies, such as listing, freewriting, mapping, diagramming, and outlining; drafting, reviewing; revising; and editing.

Your teen will be expected to participate in peer reviews. Thus, they will be developing two very important skills: the ability to judge the effectiveness of a piece of writing and to accept constructive criticism from their peers. They will then be expected to use their own evaluation and the evaluation of their peers to make appropriate revisions to their work. Don't be surprised if they engage you in this review process as well!

Writing will be focused on specific writing strategies. In the eighth grade, there will be a strong emphasis on understanding audience and purpose and on organizing ideas effectively. Your teen will practice several different ways of organizing ideas, such as order of importance, comparison and contrast, and cause and effect. They will also learn strategies for writing more meaningful introductions and conclusions, and because your teen's argumentation and abstract thinking skills are developing, they will see an increased emphasis on stating a clear thesis and providing detailed support for that thesis.

Eighth graders will write several types of essays and stories, with most papers running five to seven paragraphs in length. They will be expected to be proficient in the narrative essay, expository essay, argumentative or persuasive essay, and finally, they will formulate a research paper.

In all of these essays, the emphasis will be on the idea your eighth grader is "arguing," and on providing strong support for that argument. Students will also be learning how to logically organize and develop their own ideas and how to write in a way that demonstrates an understanding of their audience, such as selecting an appropriate style and tone. A good deal of attention will be paid to helping your teen develop a strong writing voice so that their personality comes across in their writing.

On the sentence level, your writer will be expected to pay greater attention to word choice, and to use several stylistic and poetic devices in their work. They will be expected to have a greater variety in sentence structure and be able to edit their work carefully to eliminate errors.

Rubrics will play an important and critical role in your teen's writing experience.

To handle this challenging schedule and curriculum, your eighth grader will need to have a good handle on their study skills. Your teen should be able to:

* manage time effectively
* listen effectively and take notes
* manage projects
* solve problems

These skills are not an official part of the curriculum - that is, they probably won't be specifically taught in any class - but they will be reinforced across the curriculum.

As you can see, eighth grade is a unique, transitional year for your adolescent, whose curriculum will challenge them to use their developing reasoning skills. It is important for your teen to manage time well and develop and maintain strong study skills. Don't be surprised if they experience some growing pains this year as they face new, more difficult subject matter and approaches; they may need a little more time to develop their abstract thinking skills and may need extra support as they learn how to approach problems systematically.

You can help your teen through these difficult times and stay involved throughout the school year.

- adapted from What Your 8th Grader Is Learning in School

-Kathleen Flynn, 08.29.2009