Grade 8 English Language Arts
9 units matched to the Manitoba Curriculum. Kids see this subject as “Language Arts”.
Learning focus
- A1 Oral Language Communication: Learners will apply listening and speaking skills to receive, exchange and develop ideas for various purposes and audiences.
- A2 Language as the Foundation for Reading and Writing:
- B1 Acquire New Information: Learners will activate, acquire and build background knowledge through inquiry of diverse topics and engagement with multimodal forms of text (e.g., visual, oral, print, digital, experts, Elders).
- B2 Construct Meaning: Learners will understand and apply a variety of comprehension strategies to construct the meaning of text and consolidate new information.
- B3 Think Critically about Multimodal Text and Respond: Learners will recognize, analyze, and respond critically to inequities, bias, and viewpoints in texts and ideas.
- C1 Generate Ideas, Create Plan and Draft/Prototype: Learners will generate ideas, conduct research, evaluate sources, and design a plan to compose multimodal texts (visual, multimedia, oral, written) for a range of purposes and audiences.
- C2 Enhance the Clarity and Artistry of Multimodal Texts: Learners will apply knowledge and understanding of the variables of writing to enhance the clarity, precision and effectiveness of their creations and reflect critically on created text.
- C3 Edit and Publish:
- D1 Share Ideas and Information:
- D2 Assess and Set Goals: Learners will use metacognition (the ability to think about one’s own thinking) to assess their language skills as listeners, speakers, readers, writers, viewers and representers, supporting their grow as independent learners. Learners will set goals and monitor progress.
Units
Unit 1
Reading Detective
Making and checking predictions, choosing a strategy when reading gets tricky, drawing local and global inferences from clues, and summarizing the main ideas of complex texts.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B2.5 · choosing reading strategies to understand a text
Unit 2
Close Reading
Reading original short passages and answering questions about theme, tone, word choice, inference and the author's purpose, using evidence from the text.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B2.3, ELA.8.B2.6 · predicting, inferring and summarizing from grade-level texts
Unit 3
Whose Story Is It?
Recognizing third-person limited and omniscient narrators, spotting clues that a narrator is unreliable, and thinking about how a story would change from another character's point of view.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B3.3 · a text creator's point of view and the narrator's voice
Unit 4
Literary Devices
Naming devices like simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, irony, foreshadowing and symbolism in short excerpts, and identifying a narrator's point of view.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B2.4, ELA.8.B2.7 · literary devices and connecting ideas across texts
Unit 5
Forms, Patterns & Visuals
Comparing text forms such as editorials, news articles, poems and graphic novels, spotting text patterns like problem-solution and compare-contrast, and judging how features, images and design add to meaning.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B2.1, ELA.8.B2.2 · text forms, features and cues that carry a message
Unit 6
Argument & Media
Telling fact from opinion, spotting persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) and weak reasoning, and judging how reliable a source or media message is.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.B3.1, ELA.8.B3.2 · fact, opinion and subtle bias in arguments and media
Unit 7
Word Study
Using prefixes, suffixes and Greek and Latin roots to work out unfamiliar words, reading context clues, and noticing how word choice changes feeling.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.A2.4, ELA.8.A2.5 · word structure and vocabulary
Unit 8
Grammar & Style
Active and passive voice, run-ons, parallel structure, commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons and common usage choices.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.C2.2, ELA.8.C3.3, ELA.8.C3.4 · sentence variety, capitalization and punctuation
Unit 9
Write It Better
Choosing the right form and tone for an audience, using reliable sources and giving credit, building voice, acknowledging other perspectives, and revising, editing and proofreading drafts.
Learning outcome: ELA.8.C2.5 · revising writing for clear word choice and sentence structure
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