Grade 8

Eighth grade is an exciting year as students prepare to transition to high school.  Students continue to develop their self-advocacy skills, their independence, and their stamina in all subject areas.

Areas of study include: the Bible and everyday life, traditions and values of the Catholic Church, and Catholic identity.

Students are engaged in a balanced literacy approach to reading instruction. The curriculum includes spelling, comprehension, vocabulary development, decoding strategies and listening skills. Students study various genres of text including: realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, myth, drama, poetry, biography, narrative non-fiction, and expository text. The daily reading block includes direct reading instruction, small group/whole group instruction, and guided reading.

NOTE: Daily independent reading both at home and in school is a very important part of the total reading program. Reading at home, both independently and aloud, and annotating the texts is greatly encouraged.

Utilizing Judith Hochman’s Basic Writing Skills, students improve the linguistic complexity of their sentences and improve the overall organization of their expository writing. Students use outlines from the Hochman Writing Method including the quick outline, transitional outline, and multiple paragraph outline to organize their writing. Students engage in writing multiple paragraph essays that are descriptive, persuasive, cause and effect, and compare/contrast in nature.

The eighth-grade math curriculum prepares students to enter Algebra 1 in high school. As such the curriculum delves deeply into pre-algebra. Eighth grade math students study functions, real numbers, rational and irrational numbers, solving and graphing linear equations, finding the slope and the y-intercept.

Units of study include: Earth’s structure and movement, cells, matter, the laws of motion, energy, ecology and the environment, and heredity.

Areas of study include: Reconstruction, westward expansion, industrial development and immigration, World War I, World War II, and the Postwar era.