In the 8th grade language arts class, students will...
Reading
1. Apply strategies, including making inferences to
determine theme, confirming or refuting predictions, and
using specific context clues, to comprehend eighth-grade
recreational reading materials.
·
Applying self-monitoring strategies for
text understanding
·
Distinguishing fact from fiction to
enhance understanding
·
Determining sequence in recreational
reading materials
2. Evaluate the impact of setting, mood, and
characterization on theme in specific literary
selections.
·
Identifying components of plot
3. Distinguish among the subcategories of poetry,
such as ballads, lyric poems, epics, haiku, and
limericks, based on their characteristics.
·
Identifying rhythm and rhyme scheme
4. Apply strategies appropriate to type of reading
material, including making inferences to determine bias
or theme and using specific context clues, to comprehend
eighth-grade informational and functional reading
materials.
·
Applying self-monitoring strategies for
text understanding
·
Comparing predicted with actual content in
informational and functional reading materials
·
Distinguishing fact from opinion in
informational reading materials
·
Confirming author’s credentials
·
Determining sequence of steps, events, or
information
Literature
5. Explain distinguishing characteristics of odes,
ballads, epic poetry, historical documents, essays,
letters to the editor, and editorials.
6. Analyze works of literature for character
motivation, mood, tone, theme, similarities across
texts, and literary devices.
Writing and Language
7. Compose a business letter, including heading,
inside address, salutation, body, closing, and
signature.
8. Write in narrative, expository, and persuasive
modes with attention to descriptive elements.
Examples: descriptive elements—sensory detail,
figurative language, spatial relationships
9. Apply mechanics in writing, including using
quotation marks, underlining, and italics to punctuate
titles and using semicolons, conjunctive adverbs, and
commas to join two independent clauses or to correct
run-on sentences.
·
Demonstrating correct sentence structure
by avoiding comma splices in writing
·
Using commas to set off nonessential
clauses and appositives in writing
10. Use prepositional phrases and compound, complex,
and compound-complex sentences to vary sentence
structure.
Example: determining variety in sentence structure by
diagramming or identifying patterns in selected
sentences
·
Using gerunds, infinitives, and
participles in writing
·
Recognizing active and passive voice in
writing
·
Applying subject-verb agreement rules with
collective nouns, nouns compound in form but singular in
meaning, compound subjects joined by correlative and
coordinating conjunctions, and subjects plural in form
but singular in meaning
11. Write sentence patterns common to English
construction.
Examples: subject→verb (S→V)
subject→action verb→direct object (S→AV→DO)
subject→action verb→indirect object→direct object
(S→AV→IO→DO)
subject→linking verb→predicate nominative (S→LV→PN)
subject→linking verb→predicate adjective (S→LV→PA)
12. Identify the correct use of degrees of
comparison, adjectives and adverb forms, and
subject-verb agreement with collective nouns when verb
forms depend on the rest of the sentence and with
compound subjects, including those joined by or
with the second element as singular or plural.
·
Recognizing parallelism in phrases and
clauses
Research and Inquiry
13. Combine all aspects of the research process to
compose a report.
Examples: outline, rough draft, editing, final copy,
works-cited page
·
Taking notes to gather and summarize
information
·
Using paraphrasing and documentation of
sources to avoid plagiarism
Oral and Visual Communication
14. Identify characteristics of spoken formal and
informal language.
Examples: formal—Standard English, no slang
informal—dialect, slang
