Welcome! Scorpion Curriculum Night!

Language Arts~Writing Curriculum Eighth Grade Language Arts~Writing Curriculum Mrs. Cigich

Contact Information E – Mail: KCigich@Kyrene.org Phone: 480-541-6734 ** I am available from 8:00 – 8:30 for additional student help daily**

Curriculum Writing Concepts: ~Narrative ~Expository/Informational ~Functional ~Argumentative ~Literary Response Bolded Concepts will be evaluated on formative assessments The students will have multiple opportunities to master these concepts as they will practice throughout the school year.

Curriculum Writing Elements ~Ideas and Content ~Organization ~Voice ~Word Choice ~Sentence Fluency ~Conventions On each writing concept, we will review and focus on three of these elements. They will be practiced throughout the school year.

Curriculum Grammar Concepts: Prepositional phrase, Parts of a Sentence (subject, predicate [verbs], complements [predicate nominative, predicate adjective, direct object, indirect object],Sentence Structure (simple, complex, compound, compound/complex), Verbals (gerund, participles, infintive), etc **Once the students are able to identify these, they will be applying them to their sentences cumulatively.

Curriculum Reacting to Texts Students will use a variety of methods to react to texts: Essays Blogs Debate Cooperative group work/projects Reciprocal Teaching A number of web-based tools will also be used – wiki spaces, Discovery Education, Screencast-o-matic, Thinglink, etc.

Textbooks Holt Elements of Language Write Source Quarter 2: Inside Out and Back Again Quarter 4: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Supplemental kits: ~Debate ~Grammar ~Vocabulary – Greek and Latin Roots; contextual vocabulary

Textbooks ALA classes: Quarter 2:Inside Out and Back Again Quarter 4: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Vocabulary from The Word Within the Word (Greek and Latin Roots) – These are SAT level words Grammar Debate **The ALA students will be doing many of the same lessons as the grade-level students but at a much more rigorous level.

Grading Weighted grading: 20% - CW, HW, participation, work completion 80% - Assessments, Projects, Writing Tasks * All raw scores will be converted to percentages prior to going in the grade book * Any assignment/assessment that scores less than 70% can be fixed for a grade change to 70%