8th grade English Language Arts
14 units matched to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Kids see this subject as “Language Arts”.
Focus areas
- Foundational language skills: Greek and Latin roots such as path, mand and duc
- Comprehension, response and genres: theme, irony, narrators and informational text structures
- Author's purpose and craft, and composition: analogy, juxtaposition, bandwagon and circular reasoning, and revising
- Inquiry and research: asking questions, finding sources and sharing what you learn
Units
Unit 1
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.6(C); 8.7(A) · theme, tone and textual evidence
Unit 2
Literary Devices
Naming devices like simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, irony, foreshadowing and symbolism in short excerpts, and identifying a narrator's point of view.
TEKS student expectation: 8.9(E) · irony, symbolism and point of view
Unit 3
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.2(B); 8.2(C) · roots, affixes and idioms
Unit 4
Irony, Satire & Allusion
Telling verbal, situational and dramatic irony apart, spotting how satire uses exaggeration to criticize, and explaining what an allusion to a well-known story adds to a text.
TEKS student expectation: 8.9(E) · irony, satire and allusion
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.9(E) · limited, omniscient and unreliable narrators
Unit 6
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.8(D); 8.9(C) · text forms, patterns and visual features
Unit 7
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.5(F); 8.6(D) · inferring and summarizing
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.8(F); 8.12(H) · judging online information and staying safe online
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.
TEKS student expectation: 8.10(C); 8.10(D) · revising and proofreading
Unit 10
Precise Words & Spelling
Children use word families, prefixes, suffixes and spelling rules, choose precise words for a subject, and use word-processing tools to format a document.
TEKS student expectation: 8.10(D) · precise vocabulary and spelling rules
Unit 11
Media Influence
Children explain the purposes of media messages and the techniques behind them (appeals to emotion, logic and credibility, editing, subtext, sponsorship) and how feeds and echo chambers affect people's reactions.
TEKS student expectation: 8.8(F); 8.12(H) · the motives behind media messages and the techniques they use
Unit 12
Weigh the Evidence
Children judge evidence and sources for accuracy, logic and fairness, spot fallacies and weak statistics, check content made by technology and combine sources with proper citations.
TEKS student expectation: 8.8(E); 8.12(H) · judging sources and whether evidence is relevant and sufficient
Unit 13
Roots: ast, qui, path, mand, duc
Your child uses the roots ast (star), qui (quiet or rest), path (feeling), mand/mend (order) and duc (lead) to work out word meanings.
TEKS student expectation: 8.2(C) · academic words built on the roots ast, qui, path, mand/mend and duc
Unit 14
Analogy, Contrast & Fallacies
Your child explains how analogy and juxtaposition work and spots bandwagon appeals and circular reasoning in arguments and ads.
TEKS student expectation: 8.9(G) · analogy, juxtaposition, bandwagon appeals and circular reasoning
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