Middle School ELA

Class Description

This all encompassing English Language Arts course welcomes students of all skill levels to explore literature and writing as one of the most basic forms of human entertainment--story telling. 

Why do we tell stories?  Who hears them? How can we become better story tellers? Do stories matter?

We will begin the year with a study of literary terms that can be applied to fiction and then begin our exploration of the novel Esperanza Rising. 

We will then continue on to a study of poetry and literary terms used to discuss the genre, which will lead us into a novel study of Inside Out and Back Again in which the story is told through poems. 

The third major unit of study for the year will be non-traditional storytelling (dialogue only, graphic novels, shorts). 

Finally, we will study the structure and “ingredients” of a fairy tale and the many “Cinderella” stories found across cultures. The culminating project for the year will be writing their own Cinderella story. 

In this year long course students work to become more active readers as we explore novels, ask questions, and search out answers. All reading materials can be found as audio recordings as well to meet the differentiated reading skills of the class; in a similar fashion all writing assignments are leveled to meet students current skill sets and allow development and advancement to happen on an individual level. 

At the end of the year each student will be provided with a summary of the year as well as a personalized write-up.

Materials

All reading materials will be provided.

Students will need paper and writing tool in class, as well as access to google classroom and google docs at home.