Miss Sweiss’ Eighth Grade English Language Arts Course Syllabus

*PARENT ORIENTATION ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2013, from 6:30-8:30 PM

Contact Information: Room: 47 (Mobile Unit) Telephone: 708-233-4579 Email: csweiss@npd117.net

Class Website: http://www.wix.com/csweiss/classroom

Course Objectives: Welcome to Ms. Sweiss’ Reading and English classroom! Throughout the year, we will explore numerous genres of literature, namely fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and folk literature. Students will develop an appreciation for literature, while also developing strategies to read and write for success.

Illinois Assessment Framework and Common Core State Standards: The state of Illinois will be transitioning from the Illinois Assessment Framework to the Common Core State Standards. Therefore, the English Language Arts curriculum will reflect the changes occurring at the state and national level, as evidenced

in the Common Core State Standards (http://www.corestandards.org/). There will be extensive reading, writing, and critical thinking analyses throughout the course of the academic year.

Literary Terms and Concepts: Students will be able to read and discuss a text after developing an understanding of the following elements of literature:

Students will be exposed to poetry and figurative language. Students will be able to define, provide examples of, identify examples, and analyze the literary impact of the following terms:

Grammar: Students will learn about the eight parts of speech of the English language, including the following:

Vocabulary Students will acquire vocabulary knowledge through weekly vocabulary exercises, as evidenced in the Word of the Week activities. Each week, students will learn a new word, its definition, synonyms, antonyms, affixes, and they will use the word in context. Students will also acquire vocabulary from the novels and texts read in class as well as the Rev It Up Vocabulary Series.

Gef Genre Characterization and Methods of Characterization

Plot and Plot Diagram [exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution]

Setting Character (Protagonist and Antagonist) Climax

Theme Conflict (Internal and External) Irony [verbal, dramatic, and situational]

Mood and Tone Foreshadowing and Flashback Symbolism

Dialect Dialogue Point of View [first, second, third limited, third objective, and third omniscient]

Motif Allegory Allusion

Stanza Alliteration Onomatopoeia

Simile Metaphor Idiom

Hyperbole Personification Assonance and Consonance

Imagery Denotation and Connotation Oxymoron and Paradox

Nouns [Common, Proper, Abstract, Concrete, Compound] Adjectives

Pronouns [Personal, Demonstrative, Interrogative, Indefinite, Subject, and Object Pronouns]

Adverbs

Verbs [Action, Helping, Linking] Prepositions

Conjunctions [Coordinating, Correlative, Subordinating] Interjections

Writing Students will be able to demonstrate effective writing skills and will develop writing strategies, such as brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Students will learn the different techniques for using voice in writing and will be asked to demonstrate such knowledge in their weekly journal and/or blog entries. Students will learn how to write an argumentative essay, narrative essay, extended response, and a research essay. Students will maintain a writing portfolio throughout the year, in which they will reflect on the growth of their writing.

Classroom Materials: Composition Book

Binder with 5 dividers [Reading, English, Writing, Vocabulary, Poetry]

Pens and pencils

Red Pen

Highlighters

Dry Erase Markers

Paper

Kleenex

Recommended- Thesaurus and/or Dictionary

Homework Policy: Students are responsible for completing their homework and submitting it on time. Students who do not complete their homework will serve an AM (before school 7:15 AM) Homework Detention in Miss Sweiss’ classroom.

Homework Schedule: Students should expect to have homework most nights of the week. Students should be reading for their monthly reading log; it is expected that students are reading for a minimum of 20 minutes each night. Also, students will be assigned a

journal entry on Monday which will be due on Thursday of that week. There will be extensive READING AND WRITING in this class.

Absence and Tardy Policy: Students who are absent will have two days to complete the homework assignment. Tardies will be handled in the manner delineated in the student handbook. Students must be in the door when the bell rings; otherwise, the teacher will mark the student tardy and administer the tardy consequences accordingly.

Classroom Rules: Listen when others are talking

Follow directions

Keep hands, feet, and objects to yourself

Work in a safe and quite manner.

Show respect for school and personal property

Classroom Consequences: First Offense: Verbal Warning

Second Offense: Lines or Essays

Third Offense: Detention [students will receive a detention slip and have it signed by parents]

Fourth Offense: Call parents to schedule a conference

Reading Logs: Each month, students must submit a Reading Log which documents that the student has read 400 minutes (500 for students in the Bock-B class). Students should read approximately twenty minutes each night in order to fulfill the 400-500 minute requirement. Students must read at least one age-appropriate book. However, students may also choose to read newspapers, magazines, comic books, etc. to fulfill the four-hundred minute requirement.

Independent Reading Time [IRT] and IRT Logs Students will spend the first 15 minutes of each class engaged in Independent Reading Time. Students may choose any fiction or nonfiction book to read during this time. One of the goals for this course is to develop life-long readers; IRT allows students the freedom to read age and level- appropriate books that address their individual interests. Students may use the minutes of IRT on their monthly Reading Log to fulfill the 400-minute reading goal. Further, if students finish their IRT book, it is their responsibility to acquire another book on their own time (homeroom, before school, after school) prior to coming to class.

Composition Books and Binder: Each day, students will practice writing and grammar skills. When students walk into class, they will see a bell-ringer assignment on the overhead projector. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, students will correct two Daily Oral Language (DOL) sentences and write DOL notes; on Tuesdays, students will read a nonfiction passage and implement a reading strategy and/or skill. On Thursdays, students will analyze a poem and use CRISS (Creating Independence through Student-Owned Strategies) strategies to make meaning of the text. Each class will begin in this manner, and students are responsible for maintaining all assignments in their composition books and/or binder.

Literature: We will be reading all genres of literature throughout the year, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and folk literature. Each Tuesday, students will read a nonfiction article or essay; students will learn a reading strategy and apply it to the nonfiction text. Each Thursday, students will read and analyze a poem using a comprehension strategy.

The following includes a tentative list of texts that students will read throughout the year:

Nonfiction Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon Night by Elie Wiesel “Survival Boot camp” (Digital Text) “Into Thin Air” “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat Address to Parliament on May 14, 1940,” Winston Churchill “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (Autobiography Excerpt) “On Woman’s Right to Suffrage” (Persuasive Speech) “Utopias and Dystopias” “The Great Depression” Article “The Dust Bowl Article Einstein’s Letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Atomic Bomb

*ISAT Prep Passages with Questions READ Magazine Articles Biographies on Authors

Drama

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry READ Magazine Plays

Folk Literature

“Why the Waves have White Caps” by Zora Neale Hurston “Pandora’s Box” Other Legends, Myths, Folk Tales, etc.

Poetry “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks “Speech to the Young” by Gwendolyn Brooks "Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost “A Poison Tree” by William Blake “Hope is the thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” by Emily Dickinson “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas “Courage” by Anne Sexton “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen “Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar “Imagine” by John Lennon

“O Captain, My Captain” by Walt Whitman “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare Sonnet 120 by William Shakespeare “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns “The Courage that My Mother Had” by Edna St. Vincent Millay “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus “The Rainy Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden “The World is not a Pleasant Place to Be” by Nikki Giovanni “The Rose that Grew from Concrete” by Tupac “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale

Fiction Short Stories Novels

Unit on Edgar A. Poe: “The Tell-Tale Heart” “The Black Cat” “The Cask of Amontillado” “The Pit and the Pendulum” “The Masque of the Red Death” “The Fall of the House of Usher” “The Oblong Box” “The Raven” (Poem) “Annabel Lee” (Poem) Unit on O. Henry “The Gift of the Magi” “A Retrieved Reformation” “The Ransom of Red Chief” “Hearts and Hands” “The Last Leaf” “After Twenty Years” “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes “Charles” by Shirley Jackson “Thank You, Ma’am” by Langston Hughes “The Necklace” by Guy di Maupassant “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs “The Lady or the Tiger” by Frank Stockton “The Open Window” by Saki “A Rose for Emily” by William Falkner “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane “To Build a Fire” by Stephen Crane “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman

The Giver by Lois Lowry Nothing but the Truth by Avi Hero by S.L. Rottman Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Night by Elie Wiesel (Nonfiction) Frankenstein (excerpts) by Mary Shelley Animal Farm by George Orwell The Pigman by Paul Zindell

Writing Extended Responses Narrative Essays Argumentative Essays Creative Writing (Journal Entries) Discussion Board Responses (Blogs) Poetry Close Read Responses Research Essay

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