Course Outline
Grade level: eighth Course number: EN08 Course name: English Language Arts
Course description: Eighth grade English language arts is a survey course which includes writing, reading, speaking and listening, and language as described in Arizona’s Common Core Standards for English Language Arts located at the Arizona Department of Education website at http://www.azed.gov/k12-literacy/ela-standards/. The standards are designed to improve student readiness for post-high school pursuits at universities, colleges, technical schools, or in the armed services. Methods and tools used to help students meet these standards are research, critical and creative thinking skills, critical reading strategies, classroom discussion forums such as Socratic Discussions and Philosophical Chairs, and Cooperative Learning. This course is challenging and requires students to be responsible and actively participate. Students should expect nightly homework which could be reading, writing, vocabulary exercises, language practice, research, or a multimedia project or presentation.
Course objectives:
- Students will use the writing process in order to draft, compose, revise, and edit multiple forms of writing.
- Students will identify and evaluate various sources used in research and use research to support their arguments, both oral and written.
- Students will know how to acquire and use new vocabulary in relevant contexts.
- Students should know and be able to identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the structure and elements of literary and informational text.
- Students should know and be able to explain basic elements of argument in text and their relationship to the author’s purpose and use of persuasive strategies.
Course content:
Reading/Writing Literary Text: short stories
memoirs
novels
drama
poetry
Reading/Writing Informational Text:
essays (expressive, expository,reflective,argument,persuasive, literary analysis, comparison/contrast)
articles
critiques
functional text (letters, memos, instructions, recipes, labels,schedules, pamphlets, brochures)
*Six Traits: Ideas and Content, Organization, Sentence Fluency, Word Choice, Voice, Convention
*Writing Process: Prewrite, Organize, Draft, Revise and Edit, Publish
(*Both Literary and Informational Text)
Speaking and Listening:
Using evidence/research to support opinions/ideas
Speaking and presentation skills
Technology in presentations
Leading/participating in a discussion forum
Listening and note taking skills
Evaluating a speaker/presentation
Language:
Written and oral grammatical conventions
Vocabulary development
Testing:
Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards (Reading)
District Test (Writing: Persuasive Essay