English Language Arts 8

Unit 1: Reading and Comprehension

Understanding texts — paraphrasing main ideas and details, using reference cues, drawing on prior knowledge, and broadening your thinking by exchanging ideas with others.

• Paraphrasing main ideas and details
• Using reference cues
• Using prior knowledge to interpret

• Exchanging ideas to broaden perspective

Unit 2: Responding to and Analyzing Texts

Reading closely — interpreting characters’ choices and motives, noticing how techniques create effect, matching form to purpose, telling theme from topic, and seeing how texts reflect cultures and periods.

• Interpreting character choices and motives
• How techniques create effect

• Matching form to purpose
• Telling theme from topic

• How texts reflect cultures and periods

Unit 3: Creating Texts

Writing your own texts — generating ideas from issues in texts and your own life, and structuring a story with both main and minor characters.

• Generating ideas from issues
• Structuring with main and minor characters

Unit 4: Research and Information

Handling information like a researcher — focusing a topic and tracing arguments, judging sources for reliability, organizing to show comparison or cause-effect, and recording notes in your own words with sources.

• Focusing a topic and tracing arguments
• Evaluating sources

• Organizing to show relationships
• Note-making and referencing sources

Unit 5: Writing Craft and Conventions

Polishing writing — revising for emphasis and sentence variety, understanding how new words enter the language, and applying grammar, spelling, and punctuation conventions.

• Revising for emphasis and variety
• How language changes

• Modifiers and sentence variety
• Hyphens, semicolons and dashes
• A system for spelling