Language Arts Grade 8

Mrs. Katrina Vainisi teaches Eighth Grade Language Arts.

The eighth grade language arts curriculum concentrates on reading, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and writing in an eighty-minute block period each day.  We use a novel-based approach.  There is a writing assignment for each novel we read.  We explore expository, persuasive, poetry, research, and creative writing forms, using a different type for each book we read.  We also work on creative writing, along with essay writing and note taking skills.

We use Wordskills to cover the vocabulary for eighth grade, as well as studying the vocabulary in each of the novels.  The vocabulary books double as our spelling books, too.  The Write Source is a handbook we use for everything from grammar to parts of speech to the different forms of writing.  The theme we use for the year in our novels is “social justice and our responsibility”.  Each of the  novels is about some form of social injustice, such as racism, genocide, rich vs. poor, etc.  The students are introduced to these topics and encouraged to take a stand on how they feel about them.

We will start this year with the novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor.   This novel shows how the Jim Crow laws worked in the South in the 1930s through the eyes of a nine year old child.  We will then read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and continue with this theme in the 1950s. 

I look forward to a new school year with our new eighth graders, and hope we can get into some lively discussions of the events we will be reading about!  The opportunity of learning about these topics gives them a chance to have a voice about them—and thus, in others in the future.

	A discussion in Mrs. Vainisi's class.

Mrs. Vainisi's classes benefited from the "Alumni in the Classroom" Program. John Tourtelot '61 and Jeff Kroger '60  came to speak about the Vietnam War, the topic the 8th grade is covering in Language Arts this spring.