In 8th Grade English Language Arts, students will explore thematic questions related to race, justice, oppression, morality, empowerment, and freedom in order to answer the essential question: How does power influence human behavior? Students will consider how access to power influences decision-making, and how everyday people resist unjust leadership, violent oppression, and cruelty through careful study of classic and contemporary texts: All American Boys, Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, Animal Farm, Wicked History, Persepolis, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, and additional supporting resources. Across the 5 units, students deepen their writing skills through argumentative, informational, and narrative tasks, and continue to build their academic vocabularies, speaking and listening skills, and social-emotional competencies.

Throughout the course, students address all ELA Common Core Standards as they engage with increasingly complex texts, participate in class discussions, and write daily. Each unit helps build students’ knowledge and understanding of the world around them through thematically organized core and supplemental texts, embedded writing instruction and extended writing assignments in response to Essential Questions, and daily opportunities to engage in multiple tiers of academic discourse. 

After completing the 8th grade ELA course, students will have the reading, writing, and speaking and listening skills, and the relevant background knowledge to set them up for success in high school ELA.