English Language Arts 8

Unit 1: Story and Text

Big Idea: texts are built to do a job, shaped by craft choices, dressed in visual design, and never automatically trustworthy. Telling text forms, functions, and genres apart; navigating with text features; reading literary elements and devices; reading the design of visual/graphic texts; and judging a source's relevance, accuracy, and reliability.

• Forms of text
• Functions of text
• Genres of text

• Using text features

• Characterization
• Character types
• Story structures
• Setting

• Sensory detail
• Figurative language in a text

• Layout
• Infographics
• Emoticons
• Icons
• Symbols
• Interactive visuals
• Hypertext
• Colour
• Illustration styles

• Relevance
• Accuracy
• Reliability

Unit 2: Strategies and Processes

Big Idea: strong readers, speakers, thinkers, and writers each rely on a toolkit of strategies, and get better by using them deliberately. Using reading strategies to build meaning from more demanding texts, oral language strategies for real discussion, metacognitive strategies to monitor and direct your own thinking, and the writing process to grow a piece of writing across drafts.

• Using contextual clues
• Using phonics and word structure
• Visualizing
• Questioning (reading)
• Predicting
• Previewing text
• Summarizing
• Making inferences

• Focusing on the speaker
• Asking questions to clarify
• Listening for specifics
• Expressing opinions
• Speaking with expression
• Staying on topic
• Taking turns

• Reflecting
• Questioning your own thinking
• Goal setting
• Self-evaluating

• Revising
• Editing
• Considering audience

Unit 3: Language Features, Structure, and Conventions

Big Idea: the smaller building blocks of language — how we speak aloud, how we organize paragraphs and sentences, the stylistic choices we make, and the conventions and presentation that make writing professional — give both speech and writing their power and polish. Using features of oral language, multi-paragraph organization, context-appropriate usage, elements of style, varied and fluent sentences, correct conventions, and effective presentation.

• Tone (spoken)
• Volume
• Inflection
• Pace
• Gestures

• Multi-paragraphing

• Language usage and context

• Diction
• Using figurative language in your writing
• Tone (in writing)
• Inclusive language
• Degree of formality

• Mixing simple, compound, and complex sentences
• Correct pronoun use
• Subject-verb agreement
• Using transitional words
• Spotting run-ons and fragments

• Punctuation
• Capitalization
• Quoting
• Canadian spelling

• Presentation techniques