When planning a curriculum for eighth-grade English courses, instructors should include content on word analysis, fluency and vocabulary. By the eighth-grade level, students should be expected to use knowledge of word origins, historical context, literary context clues and other details to decipher meaning. They should also demonstrate an ability to analyze idioms, analogies, metaphors, similes and other figures of speech and to use such words in an appropriate context.
Reading comprehension is an important component of the English curriculum. Reading comprehension is the ability to decipher meaning from read texts and to analyze and apply knowledge from reading. Students are expected to describe the essential ideas, arguments and perspectives that a text presents. They should also demonstrate an ability to evaluate arguments and ideas, compare and contrast themes and critically respond to texts. Importantly, the curriculum standards should provide for reading comprehension to occur in diverse texts, including narrative fiction, magazines, newspapers, textbooks and online publications.
Typically, eighth-grade English curricula include content on literary response and analysis. Students should be assigned to independently read historically and culturally important works of literature and to connect these works to other texts read. Importantly, by the completion of eighth grade, students should show an ability to determine different structural forms of literature, such as the epic, elegy, ode and sonnet, to evaluate plot and conflicts, to compare and contrast motivations of characters, to analyze the significance of setting and to identify and analyze recurring themes and motif. To evaluate students' abilities to complete these tasks, the instructor may assign several short papers and one longer paper based on literary analysis of assigned texts.
Writing is another essential component of an eighth-grade English curriculum. At this level of learning, students are expected to write clear, coherent and organized essays. Their writing should exhibit and awareness of audience and purpose and should appropriately use tone and voice. Student written work should also effectively transition between paragraphs and show proficiency with the conventions of written language, including punctuation, spelling and other grammatical conventions.