Course Description: English Language Arts 7-8 critically examines both contemporary fiction and non-fiction as well as selections from classic British Literature. This course is designed to enhance and refine students’ writing skills and students will learn how to write clearly and effectively for a variety of purposes. Throughout the course, students will be provided with a myriad of opportunities to understand, evaluate, and clearly communicate ideas through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. This course offers expanded opportunities to use 21^st century skills to enhance the learning experience and expand course themes. English Language Arts 7-8 is aligned with the Arizona College and Career Ready standards and supports the school wide efforts in increasing student achievement.

Course Objectives: By the time the students completes this course of study, the student will know or be able to:

• Determine and analyze the develop and interaction of two or more central ideas over the course of a text to provide a complex analysis or summary
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings, while analyzing the impact of specific choices on meaning and tone
• Delineate and evaluate the rhetorical effectiveness of the authors’ reasoning, premises, purpose in a variety of texts
• Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to address a question or solve a problem
• Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• Develop claim(s) and counterclaims fairly and thoroughly, supply the most relevant evidence for each while pointing out the strengths and limitations of both in a manner that anticipates the audience’s knowledge level, concerns, values, and possible biases.
• Use words, phrase, and clauses as well as varied syntax to link major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships between claim(s) and reasons, between reasons and evidence and between claim(s) and counterclaims.