8th Grade
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” -Harper Lee
Course Description
Course Goals
Together we will be reading, analyzing, and discussing a wide variety of texts, and our analysis will be demonstrated through discussion, compositions, projects, and presentations. Students will examine the links among culture, history, and literature (remember that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it...). Ultimately, the work in this class will help strengthen your critical thinking and writing skills, as well as prepare you for the demands of high school and beyond. I also hope that you will strengthen your own personal voice and explore new creative paths.
Our objective is to be prepared in the areas of reading and writing (grammar and vocab, as well as structure) for high school. In order to accomplish this objective, we will:
- increase our academic vocabularies through word analysis, discovering meaning through context, and integrating new words into writing.
-write a variety of essays with a definitive claim and the best evidence to support and develop the thesis statement. Students will write with the mastery of grammar and mechanics expected of 8th or 9th graders.
-increase reading levels through the use of close reading strategies. Students should be reading assigned or independent books EVERY NIGHT.
Assigned Reading and Book Summaries
The 8th grade LA unit will be centered on an essential question that will consider things such as justice, stereotypes, voice, wisdom, and leadership. Themes in literature repeat, even across decades, so we will explore these connections and make a few of our own. The texts we are choosing from, in no particular order, are A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, The Dropout hosted by Rebecca Jarvis, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. What we get to will be determined by how well we use our time; plans may change at my discretion.
WAAS has a copy of each text for the students to borrow, but I do encourage each student and their family to consider buying their own copy of the books. It is so much easier to be a strong, active reader when you are able to mark in the book. This tremendously aids in building reading comprehension skills. Additionally, students will read many of these books again in high school and college. Having your own copy is not mandatory, just suggested. Keep in mind, though, that if you use WAAS's copy, you must take care of it, or you will have to replace it.
These reading selections will ask us to take a good look at our culture (past and present) and at ourselves. I stand by my choice in selecting all of the novels, short stories, poems, and/or plays that we will read this year, but if you are honestly uncomfortable reading a text, please come to me immediately so that we can discuss it. I am including a brief summary of the texts listed above for families to have an understanding of what we will be gaining through reading and studying these texts.
Summaries are thanks to Goodreads.com and Amazon.com
To Kill A Mockingbird
An American classic, this novel focuses on the story of two siblings who are raised by their father. This father happens to be a lawyer who is brave enough to represent a black man in Mississippi in the 1930s. His actions have consequences for the whole family, forcing the reader to question their own obligations to truth, justice, fairness, and family.
Born A Crime
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
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His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
Thirteen Reasons Why
Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker—his classmate and crush—who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice tells him that there are thirteen reasons why she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.
Clay spends the night crisscrossing his town with Hannah as his guide. He becomes a firsthand witness to Hannah's pain, and as he follows Hannah’s recorded words throughout his town, what he discovers changes his life forever.
The Drop Out
Money. Romance. Tragedy. Deception. The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong. How did the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire lose it all in the blink of an eye? How did the woman once heralded as “the next Steve Jobs” find herself facing criminal charges — to which she pleaded not guilty — and up to decades in prison? How did her technology, meant to revolutionize health care, potentially put millions of patients at risk? And how did so many smart people get it so wrong along the way? ABC News chief business, technology and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis, along with producers Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson, take listeners on a journey that includes a multi-year investigation. You’ll hear exclusive interviews with former employees, investors, and patients, and for the first-time, the never-before-aired deposition testimony of Elizabeth Holmes, and those at the center of this story. Then, go inside the courtroom as 12 jurors decide the fate of the Theranos founder; three years after she was first charged, we find out how this saga finally ends. (summary from ABCaudio.com)
The Crucible
"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote of his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminates the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence.
Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."
The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island during the obsession with excess, is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.
Long Term Assignments
Fahrenheit 451
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
The classic novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization's enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.
Bradbury's powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a classic of twentieth-century literature which over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.
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Of Mice and Men
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.
Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.
"A thriller, a gripping tale . . . that you will not set down until it is finished. Steinbeck has touched the quick." —The New York Times
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A Tale of Two Cities
When millions suffer under iron-fisted oppression, when anger and resentment boil into bloody rebellion, when triumph leads to savage vengeance—does one individual life matter? In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens interweaves the intensely personal dramas of Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton with the terror and chaos of the French Revolution. The result is a powerful story of love, sacrifice, and redemption amid horrific violence and world-changing events.
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Red Queen
Red Queen, by #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard, is a sweeping tale of power, intrigue, and betrayal, perfect for fans of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.
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Mare Barrow's world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.
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To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction.
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One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.
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