The English Language Arts curriculum for eighth grade will enrich student’s reading and writing and lay the groundwork for becoming lifelong readers and writers. They will read a variety of informational texts as well as four major types of literary texts: non-fiction, poetry, fiction, and drama. Students will work to build a rich, authentic vocabulary and will learn to apply word analysis strategies in order to read fluently. They will use writing to entertain, to inform, to describe, and to persuade while working to plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish both narrative and expository pieces. Skills and strategies for improving voice, organization, sentence variety and structure, along with correct usage of the conventions of standard English will be reinforced.