Currant Content Focuses:


​These are the currant content focuses for Grades 6-8 English Language Arts and Grade 8 United States History.

February-March 2020 

Grade 6 English Language Arts:

The currant focus is applying grammar skill and strategy to reading and responding to short stories. Whole group reading in class creates discussion of language and how language develops. Students use grammar knowledge and skill to pull apart specific sentences and be able to interpret what the sentence shows about the author as a writer and the communication or character development throughout the short story. Our focuses have been on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "A Man Without A Country" by Edward Everett Hale, and now "The Necklace" authored by Guy de Maupassant. The essential focus here is how discussion, reading responses, and use of grammar tools serve as guides to students when it comes to being able to thoroughly write about them in essays. 

Grade 7 English Language Arts:

The currant focus for Grade 7 is Greek and Roman Mythology, a favorite to many. Understanding Greek and Roman tradition, landscape and geography, as well as language, culture, and history is all key to the development of literary knowledge. Many of the works we read in class have elements that are inspired by the classic masterpieces and are deserving of time to understand them. It also gives students the opportunity to examine words in the English language and be able to have a heightened understanding of latin and greek roots. The essential focus for this is for students to see how these elements of Greek and Roman mythology filter into novels, short stories, poems, and dramas and to recognize them using intertextual and contextual details. 

Grade 8 English Language Arts:

The currant focus is Poetry in Context. This is a very exciting section where students use interpretation, reasoning, and analysis skills to see how poets are inspired by other poets. We also examine how closely related certain periods are and how poets write back to other poets in their own works. We also look at song lyrics and examine how they are poetic. This comes with the study of form, meter, rhyme scheme, imagery, personification, alliteration, allegory, and figurative language all come into strong use when reading. We have read and deconstructed several poems. Among them are works by Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Frost, Shakespeare, Auden, Dickinson, Whitman, Kipling, Browning (Elizabeth Barrett), and Browning (Robert). The essential focus here is to examine poetry and poets in terms of their backgrounds; geography, culture, history, religious affiliation, and persona and generally determine who their audience is and what thematic and universal heritage is being addressed. 

Grade 8 United States History

In History, we are currently looking at "America Transformed (1860-1914) by way of "Growth in the West", "An Industrial Society", and "Changes in American Life." The essential focus here is how America goes from being an agricultural country of farmers to a progressive and developing world stronghold, providing imports and exports, how cultural diversity brought about new American civilization, and how brave men and women made it so citizens had fair working hours with fair wages. 

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