Grade 8 English Language Arts
10 units matched to the New Brunswick Curriculum. Kids see this subject as “Language Arts”.
Learning focus
- Interactions: Expression. Describe and communicate thoughts, feelings, and experiences as well as personal strengths.
- Interactions: Exchanges. Seek and respond to questions to clarify or explain ideas, concepts, problems, and solutions.
- Interactions: Reception. Critically reflect on the contributions of others to extend understanding.
- Reading: Word Study. Explain how a variety of word structures can be used to solve unfamiliar words.
- Reading: Fluency. Begin to read less familiar text with accuracy and expression, both silently and aloud.
- Reading: Vocabulary. Begin to use a range of strategies to determine new vocabulary in all texts.
- Reading: Reading Comprehension. Construct meaning from a variety of text considering the source, intended audience, and purpose.
- Reading: Text Analysis and Criticality. Independently select, read, and examine critically a variety of texts representing all voices.
- Representing: Process. Develop strategies to enhance clarity in multi-modal works.
- Representing: Craft. Create a variety of texts with purpose and understand the influence of the writer/creator, including authorship in digital contexts.
Units
Unit 1
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Vocabulary · word choice and word study
Unit 2
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Reading Comprehension · reading strategies
Unit 3
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Reading Comprehension · text forms and features
Unit 4
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Reading Comprehension · reading closely for meaning
Unit 5
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Text Analysis and Criticality · narrator and point of view
Unit 6
Literary Devices
Naming devices like simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, irony, foreshadowing and symbolism in short excerpts, and identifying a narrator's point of view.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Text Analysis and Criticality · literary devices and their effect
Unit 7
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.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Text Analysis and Criticality · argument, media messages and bias
Unit 8
Digital Citizens
Staying safe and respectful online, protecting privacy, spotting misinformation and disinformation, understanding how feeds are curated, and thinking about audience and purpose in digital and media texts.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Text Analysis and Criticality · digital texts and media
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.
Skill descriptor: Representing: Craft · planning, drafting and revising writing
Unit 10
Grammar & Style
Active and passive voice, run-ons, parallel structure, commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons and common usage choices.
Skill descriptor: Representing: Craft · grammar and style in writing
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