6th Grade

The 6th grade writing program is committed to educating our students to express critical thinking through the writing process. Over the course of the year, 6th grade students are introduced to developing an analytical essay starting with a single paragraph. The writing curriculum focuses on teaching the use of prewriting graphic organizers, thoughtful crafting of thesis statements, effective utilization of textual evidence to support the writer’s argument, and concluding sentences that comment upon the essay in its entirety. Additionally, students build on previous experience by generating multiple drafts, engaging in the editing and revision process, varying their sentence structure, and properly applying rules of grammar and usage. By the end of the year, students are expected to independently create a well-crafted and adequately supported analytical essay free of grammar and usage errors. Finally, as part of an interdisciplinary Greek Festival, the students craft monologues that they deliver in a theatrical production.

The 6th grade reading program is committed to educating our students to examine literature with a critical eye. Over the course of the year, 6th grade students are introduced to the process of becoming proficient in close reading and annotation, inference, and analysis. They are also beginning to broaden their understanding of the foundational elements of Greek mythology and theatre, in addition to studying full length works such as Jar of Dreams by Yoshiko Uchida, Lizzie Bright, and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt, Book of Greek Myths by Ingri, and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, Black Ships Before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff, and short works of nonfiction, as well as poetry, folktales, and legends.

6th Grade

The 6th grade writing program is committed to educating our students to express critical thinking through the writing process. Over the course of the year, 6th grade students are introduced to developing an analytical essay starting with a single paragraph. The writing curriculum focuses on teaching the use of prewriting graphic organizers, thoughtful crafting of thesis statements, effective utilization of textual evidence to support the writer’s argument, and concluding sentences that comment upon the essay in its entirety. Additionally, students build on previous experience by generating multiple drafts, engaging in the editing and revision process, varying their sentence structure, and properly applying rules of grammar and usage. By the end of the year, students are expected to independently create a well-crafted and adequately supported analytical essay free of grammar and usage errors. Finally, as part of an interdisciplinary Greek Festival, the students craft monologues that they deliver in a theatrical production.

The 6th grade reading program is committed to educating our students to examine literature with a critical eye. Over the course of the year, 6th grade students are introduced to the process of becoming proficient in close reading and annotation, inference, and analysis. They are also beginning to broaden their understanding of the foundational elements of Greek mythology and theatre, in addition to studying full length works such as Jar of Dreams by Yoshiko Uchida, Lizzie Bright, and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt, Book of Greek Myths by Ingri, and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, Black Ships Before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff, and short works of nonfiction, as well as poetry, folktales, and legends.

7th Grade

The 7th grade English curriculum strives to help students consider authorial intent and the impact of the audience in literature. Furthermore, in the 7th grade, students work to understand language as an art form and learn to use it to create and shape not just narrative but also imagery, voice, and tone. The overriding goal of the year is to help students achieve a comfort level with language that will allow them to consider and internalize the way an author utilizes style and technique to shape their work and literary vision.

The literature curriculum in 7th grade features a variety of genres to achieve these goals. Plays such as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet complement short story and poetry texts as students solidify their critical reading skills and understanding of characterization and plot. In addition, novels such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies provide excellent fodder for large group discussions and serve as a bridge to the essay writing component of the course.

In addition to building on their vocabulary and grammar knowledge, students focus on crafting a provable thesis, engaging in all phases of the writing process such as pre-writing, drafting, and editing—and supporting their arguments with multiple forms of textual evidence. Instruction is provided on how best to create a strong conclusion paragraph and how this fits into the five-paragraph essay’s larger structure. The overarching goal of the 7th grade writing curriculum is to teach students how to create and prove a nuanced argument in their analytical work.

7th Grade

The 7th grade English curriculum strives to help students consider authorial intent and the impact of the audience in literature. Furthermore, in the 7th grade, students work to understand language as an art form and learn to use it to create and shape not just narrative but also imagery, voice, and tone. The overriding goal of the year is to help students achieve a comfort level with language that will allow them to consider and internalize the way an author utilizes style and technique to shape their work and literary vision.

The literature curriculum in 7th grade features a variety of genres to achieve these goals. Plays such as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet complement short story and poetry texts as students solidify their critical reading skills and understanding of characterization and plot. In addition, novels such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies provide excellent fodder for large group discussions and serve as a bridge to the essay writing component of the course.

In addition to building on their vocabulary and grammar knowledge, students focus on crafting a provable thesis, engaging in all phases of the writing process such as pre-writing, drafting, and editing—and supporting their arguments with multiple forms of textual evidence. Instruction is provided on how best to create a strong conclusion paragraph and how this fits into the five-paragraph essay’s larger structure. The overarching goal of the 7th grade writing curriculum is to teach students how to create and prove a nuanced argument in their analytical work.

8th Grade

The 8th grade English curriculum focuses on helping students take ownership of their reading and writing skills. Building on the grammar and vocabulary foundations established in previous years, students increase their functional grammatical knowledge—specifically
focusing on punctuation—while acquiring a broader base of vocabulary words gleaned from the texts. In addition, the literature curriculum includes a unit on memoirs and incorporates twentieth-century American texts, such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Public Speaking also holds a formal place in the curriculum. Students study famous modern and historical speeches and learn about Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and the rhetorical devices that make such speeches successful.

The writing component of the curriculum aims to give students the confidence to break away from the structure and structures of the five-paragraph essay. Students engage in a wide variety of writing tasks—ranging from informal journaling to passage analysis work to formal essay writing—all to provide practice in utilizing the entire writing process. Great emphasis is placed on using Lab to contextualize and deepen their understanding of analytical writing. In-class and take-home assignments vary throughout the year in an effort to prepare students for the assortment of tasks they will face in high school English classes.