8th Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials for Grade 8 meet the criteria that texts are organized around a topic/topics (or, for grades 6-8, topics and/or themes) to build students’ ability to read and comprehend complex texts independently and proficiently.

Grade 8 is developed around the thematic concept of heroism. During the year, students learn how writers use that theme to tell stories in poetry, short stories, and nonfiction texts. Students are also asked to research topics and deepen understanding using film. The instructional materials provide opportunities to explore and demonstrate new knowledge and stances on the themes and topics.

Guidance for struggling students is incorporated into the curriculum. Each anchor and supporting text includes a Second Read activity, which asks students to look closely at selected excerpts and passages to answer text dependent questions. The Independent Reading lists also include specific suggested informational and literary texts corresponding to the theme.

Reading, questions, writing tasks, and speaking and listening activities all revolve around the study of choices made and how they impact society while growing knowledge about subtopics within each unit. Students have ample opportunity during collaborative discussions to share connections between concepts taught in class and their independent reading, and are provided opportunities to demonstrate new knowledge and stances on the themes and topics in culminating activities. There is teacher support embedded in Teacher Wrap to redirect or reteach should students misunderstand core work or need comprehension .The online Close Reading Workshops include strategies to support students in determining what each text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from what it does not say explicitly. Students have ample opportunity during collaborative discussions to share connections between concepts taught in class and their independent reading, and are provided opportunities to demonstrate new knowledge and stances on the themes and topics in culminating activities.

• Unit 1: The Challenge of Heroism: This unit presents the topic of heroes. Readings include novels, short stories, poetry, sermon, article, essay, and autobiography all on the topic of heroism. The Unit begins through looking at the challenges that arrive with the act of one’s heroism, and reviews the qualities and characteristics of a hero. The Unit also focuses on a hero’s journey and analyzes the true meaning of a hero.
• Unit 2: The Challenge of Utopia: This unit presents the topic of a utopia. The novel The Giver is utilized to study a utopian society along with its benefits and drawbacks when comparing it to the current dynamic within the modern world. The unit also analyzes the existence and challenges of heroes in a utopian society and how to identify a heroic journey.
• Unit 3: The Challenge to Make a Difference: This unit presents the topic of the Holocaust with a variety of genres including memoir, poetry, children's literature, film, drama, fiction, speech, article and informational text. Readings, questions, writing tasks, and speaking and listening activities all revolve around the study of challenges that individuals and groups face, specifically the struggles and hardships endured by groups of people, along with how they work through these challenges. The first half of the unit focuses primarily on the Holocaust and how individuals advocated for groups in an attempt to make a meaningful change.
• Unit 4: The Challenge of Comedy: This unit presents the nature and elements of comedy. More specifically, students learn about the nuances of comedy and the types of comedy. The unit explores humorous texts to understand the reasoning behind why writers and speakers utilize comedy in an attempt to convey the truth.

The materials for Grade 8 meet the criteria for materials containing sets of coherently sequenced questions and tasks that require students to analyze the language, key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts.

In most texts, students are provided opportunities to analyze language and author's word choice as they read, through sidebar word meaning and word connection lessons and questions that prompt them to interact with text to find examples of figurative, sensory and vivid language, as well as roots and affixes and other components of language. Lessons and questions require them to interact with the text to find examples of figurative, sensory and vivid language, as well as roots and affixes, etc. The tasks throughout each unit, as well as culminating activities, set expectations and purpose for analyzing structure and craft through activities and questions for each Anchor and Supporting text. In addition, support is given for struggling students in the Teacher Wrap, which gives strategies such as chunking, scaffolding, and rephrasing questions. English Learners are supported through specially designed lessons in each unit that go along with Anchor Texts, but are specifically structured to help students comprehend the text through Close Reading, Academic Vocabulary and Collaborative Discussions lessons, that provide scaffolded vocabulary instruction, and guided close reading opportunities.

The Planning the Unit section at beginning of each unit gives suggestions for Graphic Organizers that will assist English Learners in that unit. Leveled Differentiated Instruction activities are found in each unit, offering the instructor suggestions for scaffolding challenging tasks that lead to the culminating assessments. These suggestions model differentiation techniques that can be used to adapt tasks throughout each unit. In each Unit Opener, there is a one page summary of differentiation strategies that can be found in the unit. Each text contains a Second Read component and questions are specifically labeled as Key Ideas and Details, and Craft and Structure, The Teacher Wrap in print and digital edition provides teachers with a host of options to help differentiate instruction to reach all learners. A representative example of this is shown in Unit 3 Activity 3.11,students read an excerpt from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as a foundation for their learning goals of presenting talking points on a Holocaust narrative in a panel discussion and of delivering an oral reading and explaining the thematic focus of a passage. After the second read of the passage students answer a series of questions:

• Key Ideas and Details: What inferences can you make about the setting? Provide details that help form your inferences.
• Key Ideas and Details: Quote one or more lines of dialogue that show Bruno’s perspective lacks an understanding of Shmuel’s situation and explain why.
• Craft and Structure: Examine paragraph 16 that talks about “The Fury.” Who is this and why does Bruno call him “The Fury”?
• Key Ideas and Details: How does the following dialogue reveal theme: “You’re on the wrong side of the fence though”?

• After the Second Read questions, students complete a series of questions and graphic organizers in the Working from the Text exercise designed to help them analyze theme and present a panel discussion and a dramatic interpretation of the text:
  • How does the theme “finding light in the darkness” connect to the passage about Shmuel and Bruno?
  • Fill in the graphic organizer above with information from the passage. Use your notes to prepare talking points that will guide a meaningful discussion of the text.

• At the end of the activity students write a summary of the excerpt and explain how “the characters, setting, and plot relate to the theme,” which ties into the Embedded Assessment for the first part of the unit to present a panel discussion over a narrative read by the group explaining how the theme of “finding light in the darkness is developed throughout the narrative.”

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the criteria for materials supporting students’ increasing writing skills over the course of the school year, building students’ writing ability to demonstrate proficiency at grade level at the end of the school year.

Grade 8 materials contain writing assignments, Embedded Assessments, that are aligned to 8th grade standards and span the entire school year. Writing lessons are well-designed and include planning, revising, editing, and rewriting steps as well as scoring guides for each Embedded Assessment, which are associated with the texts, text sets, topics or themes from the unit.

Instruction emphasizes purpose and audience while modeling the analysis and use of logic and reason to support ideas. Instruction in writing is addressed in two integrated ways, through project-based scaffolded writing assessments and through Writing Workshops. Ten online Writer's Workshops focus on the writing process, and specific genres, Planning the Unit components at beginning of each unit provide expectations of Embedded Assessments as well as a comprehensive Instructional Pacing Guide. Throughout the year, students keep a Writer's Notebook where they record connections between text being read inside class and their self-selected independent reading.

There is a mix of on-demand and process writing. Each unit has a culminating activity that focuses on the steps of the writing process. Assessments provide opportunities for students to synthesize the lessons and skills they have practiced into different writing pieces to promote a strong ability to craft different types of essays and texts. Support for writing occurs with many scaffolded components for students to practice writing with precision. Writing samples and methods are included in instruction as students practice paragraphing as well as when they work in the writing workshop. Rubrics are consistently included to provide students guidance about which components of the writing productions need to be honed and revised.

Examples include:

• In Unit 1, Activity 1.9, students unpack Embedded Assessment 2, which has students write a multi-paragraph essay that develops their definition of heroism. Students develop the skills necessary to complete the Embedded Assessment through smaller activities throughout the second half of the unit such as Activity 1.12, which guides students in how to define and strategies for definition such as by function, by example, and by negation, before having them read the article, “Where I Find My Heroes,” guiding them through brainstorming their definition using a graphic organizer, and having them define the function of a hero citing texts they have used throughout the unit.
• In Unit 2, Activity 2.1, students unpack Embedded Assessment 1, which is a compare and contrast essay of life in a dystopian society with life in modern society. In Activity 2.2: Explanatory Writing: Compare and Contrast, students review the foundations of compare and contrast and a graphic organizer that illustrates different ways to organize the paper before reading the comparative piece, “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts.” After the reading students analyze the organizational structure of the piece and build upon lessons in Coherence learned in Unit 1 by studying transitional words specific to compare and contrast before practicing these techniques in “a short compare/contrast paragraph comparing Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.” The Teacher Wrap provides teachers with a suggestion for building connections: “The focus of this reading is structure. Bruce Catton’s essay is a powerful example of effective comparison/contrast writing about two heroic figures in American history. Connecting this reading to students’ previous study of heroism and connecting heroic traits to the study of character development in the novel they will be reading will provide a bridge between the learning of the previous unit and that of this unit.”
• In Unit 4, Activity 4.6, students practice writing an analytical paragraph. The materials include a list of commonly used transitional words and phrases and how they can be used in writing. An excerpt from the table, Emphasize: definitely, extremely, obviously, in fact, indeed, in any case, absolutely, positively, naturally, surprisingly, always, forever, perennially, eternally, never, emphatically, unquestionably, without a doubt, certainly, undeniably, without reservation.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the criteria that materials include a progression of focused research projects to encourage students to develop knowledge in a given area by confronting and analyzing different aspects of a topic using multiple texts and source materials.

Grade 8 materials provide many opportunities for students to apply reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language skills to synthesize and analyze per their grade level readings. Materials provide opportunities for both "short" and "long" research projects across the school year, including samples and practice identifying good sources and how to cite them.

Students have the opportunity to develop research skills over the course of the year, working with component parts of research (note taking, citations, organizing sources, culling evidence to bolster claims) and moving toward more sophisticated synthesis as the year progresses. There are multiple opportunities for students to engage in realistic, task-based writing that mimics career and college-style writing. References to external writing resources are included for students to use online or in text form.

Students practice eliciting evidence to use in their writing beginning in Units 1 and 2. They practice component parts of creating a claim or thesis and then supplying supporting details repeatedly.

Further examples include:

• In Unit 3, Embedded Assessment 2, students create a multimedia campaign that requires students to work together to gather information to support their project. There are directions to evaluate the credibility of sources and identify the best source material for the work. Students are required to cite sources and provide a Works Cited page or an Annotated Bibliography. The project includes a rubric that identifies components of research so that students can identify strengths and weaknesses in their own process.
• In Unit 4, students learn about Shakespeare as part of the larger theme of comedy and satire. Students are given prompts and a graphic organizer to complete via identifying details about Shakespeare's life and craft. Some content is found within the texts themselves, others students must identify outside the text using external sources.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the criteria that materials provide a design, including accountability, for how students will regularly engage in a volume of independent reading either in or outside of class.

Grade 8 materials include close reading and independent reading prompts and questions for students to engage out of class time as they read their self-selected texts. Throughout the units there are prompts connecting the class reading with students' independent reading, marked as Independent Reading Links.

The Planning the Unit section at beginning of each unit contains a suggested reading list that corresponds to the unit theme. This list is categorized by literary and nonfiction texts, and gives the Lexile level to accommodate students’ varying abilities and interests. The first activity in Unit 1 sets up a mechanism for students to self monitor their reading progress, comprehension, and fluency. The grade-level-specific Close Reading Workshops are designed to help teachers guide students as they develop the skills necessary for close reading of a broad range of high-quality texts of increasing complexity. These models can be used to support or extend the instruction already in the SpringBoard materials and serve as models for differentiation.

Examples from the Close Reading Workshop include:

• Activity 1 provides guided reading instruction that emphasizes multiple readings, vocabulary development, and close-reading strategies with a complex text.
• Activity 2 gradually releases students from teacher-guided instruction and modeling to a collaborative analysis of a visual text to which students apply the skills and strategies of close reading.
• Activity 3 releases student to closely read texts independently to respond to analysis of question and to make connections to previous texts.
• Activity 4 requires students to respond to synthesis writing, presentation, or discussion prompts to demonstrate their mastery of the close-reading skills they have practiced in the workshop.

Text and author suggestions are included for teachers to support students seeking independent reading choices. Each unit outlines specific independent reading suggestions that correlate to unit objective and include, in the teacher edition, a list of suggested texts for independent reading, as well as possible formative assessment questions. Support for building independent reading is included, such as guidance around setting deadlines and methods to keep track of reading, as well as suggestions around length of texts for students to engage with at different times (e.g. during research-heavy sections of the unit, shorter texts might be a better option for independent reading).

Post-reading prompt for students to assess their texts are included, such as "Consider the change(s) the character(s) from your independent reading book experienced. What was significant about the change? How did the change leave an impact on the character or those around him or her?" Reader/Writer Notebooks include organizers and suggestions for engaging with their independent reading. Questions are built in to support growing independent reading habits.

Literature Circles reinforce communication and collaboration, and in addition, support the independent reading process as well, as students are held accountable to their groups in that process.