Middle School Language Arts – Family

Our literature pieces will be our guide for analyzing writing to guide us in pieces of our own writing.  At middle school level, we are working on the building blocks of good writing and learning how to analyze and discuss our readings.

Minimum concepts include:

• Active reading & annotation
• Word choice, repetition and sentence variety
• Literary devices (figurative language, foreshadowing, imagery, point of view/perspective, etc.)
• Elements of literature (plot, character, setting, theme, point of view, conflict, and style)
• Summarizing
• Reflective writing
• Expository writing
• Argumentative writing
• Essays, topic statements and thesis statements
• Paragraph construction

Writing content will be repeated and developed over the course of the year.

Books will be loaned to students for the year and cannot be written in.

• Pencil case with:
  • 2-3 typical (non-colored) pencils
  • Pencil sharpener with a COVERED blade (one that captures it’s own shavings and keeps blade from being exposed)
• One 1″ to 1-1/2″ binder with 100 looseleaf sheets of paper and at least 2 dividers.
• If binder does not have pockets inside the cover, double pocket folder for handouts.

Additionally, students will need technical ability to access Zoom, EdPuzzle, FlipGrid, Nearpod.com, Discovery Education Streaming, Study.com and Canvas (our learning management system).

At home, students will need access to the internet (home or library) to look up information, related published materials and/or videos and do work through our class learning management system.  Some videos will be subscription-based and issued by illuminat-ED (all students will have accounts for Discovery Streaming and Study.com for additional video support).  Some videos will be freely available.

Students can expect to spend up to 3 hours/week to complete various assigned tasks that might require internet access.  If your family cannot allocate 3 hours/week for individual work (which may take less time), this may not be a good fit.  Some of this can be done during Flex Work Time at our facility.

Live class time will assume students have done their pre-reading, writing assignments, online content and any offline work. We will be collaboratively discussing and analyzing our offline work and building upon that.

The key points in knowing if your aged 11+ student will be well-suited for this course will be whether they are: 1) able to deal with life topics like the death of a character; and 2) ready to start contributing meaningfully to discussions about decision-making with an open-mind that can take a situation and/or others input and evaluate it rather than simply tossing it aside because it doesn’t fit their existing mindset.

Sample discussion questions (based on assigned reading and usually a prior discussion about the reading) are:

• Why does (character A) talk to (character B) and tell him, “Thanks for the help”?
• Why does the speaker call the handshake “lethal”?
• Why does (character A) believe that (character B)’s always been jealous of her?

Sample writing assignments would be:

• Under what circumstances is one friend justified in breaking a promise to another friend? (essay)
• Write your own definition of friendship. (graphic organizer provided)
• Compare and contrast animal and human friends. (essay with graphic organizer provided)
• Write a series of letters between two friends.  Give the friends a reason to write (perhaps one has moved away or perhaps they are trying to repair the friendship after an argument)

If you feel your child would be challenged, but not completely overwhelmed, with questions and assignments like this rather than stumped, then your child would be a good fit for this course.  If you are unsure, please contact us to discuss further.