English Language Arts

In Grade 6 English, students read a variety of genres. Not only will students read novels, but they will also read literature from the anthology, The Language of Literature, as well poems and articles. Students continue to develop previously learned reading strategies including summarizing, predicting, analyzing, clarifying, visualizing, connecting, and questioning. As students build on these skills, they learn to analyze literature as self-directed learners and critical thinkers while interacting with the text at a higher level. Students are encouraged to connect reading selections to their own lives, the world around them, and to previously read literature.

Students practice and improve their writing skills through many different writing genres: narrative, persuasive/argument, response to literature, and research-based writing. Students learn to improve word choice, sentence variety, paragraph development, punctuation, vocabulary and spelling. Students also complete the research project, "Elder Tea," in which they spend time learning about someone important in their lives and present on this individual.

Curriculum Units and Learning Outcomes:

Building the Reading Culture in 6th Grade (Routines, Structures, Stamina)
Launching the Writer’s Notebooks and Independent Writing
Coming of Age Book Clubs--Realistic Fiction
Writing Personal Narratives
Looking at Structures in Nonfiction Articles
Writing within Non-Fiction Text Structures

Students in Grade 7 English read across the literary genres, organized around the theme of "Coming of Age." Students study novels such as, but not limited to, So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. These particular selections are known for their international literary acclaim and they offer students opportunities to examine and understand aspects of the human condition. While reading these novels, students work collaboratively to sharpen their critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

Through the literary anthology The Language of Literature, students read selected short stories, poems, and plays, continuing to examine the "Coming of Age" theme. Students learn to analyze and evaluate the connections between literature and themselves, as well as how literature relates to the outside world.

Formal student writing includes narratives, arguments, and expository compositions. Students analyze and evaluate their writing for strengths and areas in need of improvement while in peer review groups, guided by writing rubrics.  Throughout writing instruction, they learn to improve their word choice, sentence variety, style and length, and paragraph structure in order to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively. Students also enhance their knowledge of standard grammar, demonstrating this skill base in their writing.

Curriculum Units and Learning Outcomes:

Argument Writing Term II
Crisis and Courage
What We May Be: Examining Our World through Dystopian Literature
Sentence Sense
Building Character through Narrative
Truth, Lies and The American Way
Realistic Fiction - Identity and Sense of Self
Writing About Reading

In the Grade 8 English curriculum, students explore the concepts of justice, tolerance and adversity through discussions of characters, conflicts, and themes in varying genres of literary works. As students read, analyze, and respond to these central concepts in novels, short stories, and non-fiction texts, they gain insight into their lives and the world around them.

The goal of English 8 is to continue to increase students' skills in the following areas: vocabulary usage, decoding, literary analysis, formal, thesis-based writing, as well as informal writing. Within these units, students work both individually and collaboratively to sharpen their creativity, leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills while, at the same time, infusing the self-directed learning requirements demanded of 21st-century learners. The literary selections of English 8 include short stories, poetry, non-fiction, and novels. Novels may include, but are not limited to, Trouble by Gary Schmidt, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Also, students are introduced to their first Shakespearean play, the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. An annual live performance of the play is sponsored by the HPTA. From these texts, students analyze and evaluate the elements of fiction.  Formal student writing involves thesis-based research and thesis-based literary analysis.

Examination of word choice, sentence variety, and paragraph structure strengthens communication skills. In addition to rules of usage, punctuation, and spelling, students continue to refine their skills in providing textual evidence while developing an awareness of voice and audience in their writing.

Curriculum Units and Learning Outcomes:

Facing History, Our World, and Ourselves
An Introduction to Shakespeare
Nature vs. Nurture
Short Stories, a study of literature
Greed and Destruction

Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of forms. Media Literacy includes the skills of literacy-reading, writing, speaking, listening, inquiring, and critically viewing-extended to all message forms and a wide range of technologies.

Grades 7 and 8 students participate in Media Literacy classes one trimester per year.
 

Grade 7 students begin the term by building an awareness of their media consumption. They evaluate and discuss the constructed messages in the media that surrounds them each day. As the term progresses, they learn to work collaboratively to create a variety of media. With the knowledge that all media is deliberately constructed, students learn to independently identify the frameworks that are the structure of most of the media we consume. With a focus on information media, 7th graders learn to create media messages using a wide range of technologies and frameworks, and identify useful applications for the media that they find and create.

Curriculum Units and Learning Outcomes:

Basics of Media Literacy
Real News
Advertising Frameworks
Behind the Scenes
Creating Collaboratively

Grade 8 students build on their knowledge as consumers and creators to become confident critics of all media. 8th graders evaluate how media messages shape our vision of the world and our sense of ourselves. As students deconstruct and analyze media messages, they work to become more critical and questioning readers and viewers. Students study entertainment media as a powerful source of social learning that shapes attitudes, social and consumer behaviors, and people's world views. 8th graders learn to employ media literacy as an antidote to manipulation and propaganda and become empowered as positive contributors to society to challenge cynicism and apathy. By the end of 8th grade, students are ready to serve as agents of social change.

Curriculum Units and Learning Outcomes:

Basics of Media Literacy
The Impact of Media on our World
Media and Social Constructs
Agents of Social Change