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 texts that predominately follow America's timeline. Our emphasis will be on the critical reading of American literary selections, 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 curriculum will be centered on the idea of connections between time and place. 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 are Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Serial produced by This American Life, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. These texts are what is planned, however, plans may change at the discretion of the instructor.
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.
Serial
A high-school senior named Hae Min Lee disappeared one day after school in 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland. A month later, her body was found in a city park. She'd been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was sentenced to life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae's body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.
Sarah Koenig sorted through thousands of documents, listened to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talked to everyone she could find who remembered what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee. She discovered that the trial covered up a far more complicated story than the jury – or the public – ever got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence — all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.
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."