Literature and Writing 6th -8th
General Course Description
Students in the Literature Courses will be provided with an integrated and in-depth language arts study in reading, literature, speaking and listening, and vocabulary for high school readiness. Students in the Writing Courses will also be provided with a study in grammar, language, and writing, which will be integrated fully with the accompanying Literature Course. The Course objectives are aligned with the Florida State Standards for English Language Arts and the Cardinal Newman Society Catholic Standards.
English Language Arts
Content will include, but not be limited to the following:
Text craft and structure
Power and impact of language
Personal critical and aesthetic response
Arguments and claims supported by textual evidence
Influence of history, culture, and setting on language
Crafting coherent, supported informative/expository texts
Responding to literature for personal and analytical purposes
Writing narratives to develop real or imagined events
Writing to sources (short and longer research) using text based claims
and evidence
Bay District Schools equivalent Courses (6th # 1001010, 7th # 1001040, 8th # 1001070)
English Language Arts
- We want students to read well, speak well, and think well. This means that we want them to understand and internalize how language works both at the level of individual words (their roots, conjugations and declensions), but also the parts of speech. These are the building blocks of argument.
- Reading well therefore means reading efficiently, but it also means reading insightfully. The study of language and stories is therefore an introduction to basic human questions. Students should learn how to question a story and be questioned by it. With the right literature, even young students can be made to consider the worthiness‘ of a character‘s choices, the consequences of their actions, and the importance of truth. They can be asked to consider whether a story or a character is fair or just, whether it is beautiful and why. What are the elements of this and its effect? Does it make the student happy or sad? Can a story be beautiful and sad? They can begin to recognize the significance of symbols and foreshadowing.
- The study and recitation of poetry should be used to cultivate memory and the skills that go along with recitation, but poetry should also be treated as a form of vision and a window into truth.
- The study of language and literature should complement the study of history and culture by providing a window into them, e.g., in showing how the theme of life as a dangerous journey home‘ in Homer and Virgil is decisively taken up and transformed in Christianity and expressed in a millennium of Christian literary and visual art.
Content will include, but not be limited to the following:
- Active reading of varied texts for what they say explicitly, as well as the logical inferences that can be drawn
- Analysis of literature and informational texts from varied literary periods and genres to examine:
Text craft and structure
Power and impact of language
Personal critical and aesthetic response
Arguments and claims supported by textual evidence
Influence of history, culture, and setting on language
- Writing for varied purposes
Crafting coherent, supported informative/expository texts
Responding to literature for personal and analytical purposes
Writing narratives to develop real or imagined events
Writing to sources (short and longer research) using text based claims
and evidence
- Effective listening, speaking, and viewing strategies with emphasis on the use of evidence to support or refute a claim in multimedia presentations, class discussions, and extended text discussions
- Collaboration amongst peers
- Read assignments from longer text passages, as well as shorter ones when text is extremely complex
- Making close reading and rereading of texts central to lessons
- Ask high-level, text-specific questions and requiring high-level, complex tasks and assignments.
- Support answers with evidence from the text
Bay District Schools equivalent Courses (6th # 1001010, 7th # 1001040, 8th # 1001070)