LANGUAGE ARTS III - 8
Overview
Through reading, writing, and rhetoric, students in the MJ Language Arts 3 course examine how authors fine-tune and utilize their craft to create texts with purpose. Students continue to develop the reading, writing, language, and speaking/listening skills necessary for success in high school, college, career, and beyond. Students evaluate and analyze voice, purpose, diction, syntax, and rhetoric in historical speeches, informational texts, and classic and contemporary literature through guided readings, interactive practice, and formal assessments. They also refine their narrative, informational, and argumentative writing skills through the repeated practice of planning, drafting, revising, and editing their written work.
Major Topics and Concepts
- Explaining author’s purpose through diction and syntax
- Examining the ways literary elements interact
- Analyzing plot structure
- Tracking the development of two or more themes in literature
- Determining point of view and perspective
- Identifying symbolism in literary texts
- Uncovering word meanings through context clues
- Determining the central idea of a text
- Writing effective summaries
- Utilizing parallel structure in writing
- Examining informational text structures and features
- Locating credible sources based on bias, origin, and purpose
- Avoiding plagiarism
- Citing sources correctly
- Formatting the Works Cited page
- Using signal phrases and transitions in academic writing
- Writing effective informational introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions
- Formulating thesis statements for academic writing
- Using precise language and domain-specific vocabulary
- Integrating interesting grammar to enhance voice
- Editing and revising with purpose
- Connecting the use of figurative language devices to a text’s meaning
- Identifying and correcting logical fallacies
- Using semicolons effectively
- Understanding active and passive voice
- Determining word meaning through affixes and root words
Segment 1 Advanced
- Analyzing sound devices and symbolism in poetry
- Researching and writing about an American folktale
- Paraphrasing rigorous literary texts
- Connecting historical context and setting to literary texts
- Analyzing how rhetorical appeals and devices support an argument
- Planning and organizing an effective argument
- Identifying elements of an effective claim, counterclaim, and rebuttal
- Effectively supporting a claim with well-researched evidence
- Using elaborative details to communicate and clarify knowledge to an audience
- Analyzing how a poem’s use of structure and poetic devices affect the meaning
- Comparing archetypes across literature
- Identifying various types of narratives
- Clarifying point of view and perspective
- Tracking the development of conflict and theme
- Revising for parallel structure
- Using digital media to create a novel review
- Planning a narrative based on a plot archetype
- Using narrative techniques to enhance creative writing
Segment 2 Advanced
- Creating a persuasive presentation using rhetorical appeals and devices
- Composing a narrative poem using poetic devices
- Delivering a student-written speech based on a fictional character’s perspective
Fee Details
Regular : R 8000.00
Grade 8
Annual
All students select ONE novel below:
- Copper Sun by Sharon Draper
- The Outsiders by SE Hinton
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
or one short story below:
- “Cupid and Psyche” by Apuleius
- “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry
- “The Golden Touch” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane
Advanced students select one additional novel below:
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- Call of the Wild by Jack London
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
None
