Curriculum: English
Summer Reading: The Omnivore’s Dilemma - Young Readers Edition by Michael Pollan
Each year of the curriculum ensures that all students have a common reading background and a shared experience in writing, usage, and grammar. Writing assignments include a mixture of critical and creative writing, with emphasis on the analytical essay.
Sixth Grade
Essential Question: Who am I as a person? Who am I as a reader and writer?
Students engage in a year-long exploration of self-identify. The program incorporates literature, written and spoken language, and specific skill development and seeks to develop student skills in reading comprehension, understanding of literary elements, grammar, spelling, and writing.
Seventh Grade
Essential Question: How do people change?
The course builds on the skills and knowledge that students learned in sixth grade English. As seventh graders, students learn to read literature as a lens for understanding how characters change and develop. They learn a critical approach through exposure to a wide variety of texts: classic and contemporary short stories, novels, plays, and poetry. Students write across all genres with an emphasis on critical writing such as theme paragraphs and beginning formal essays.
Eighth Grade
Essential question: Whose story is it?
Students continue their study of how to talk and write about literature. This year, the focus is on understanding the role and reliability of the narrator and the author’s voice and on identifying the issues relating to human behavior and ethics that the texts present. Students read a variety of literature and write across all genres, with a dual emphasis on close analysis and creativity.
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