8th Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials for Grade 8 fully meet the expectations of anchor texts organized around appropriate topic(s), and more commonly theme, to build students’ ability to read and comprehend complex texts independently and proficiently at grade level. Students read different kinds of texts focused on the same themes and topics, building content knowledge of that topic/theme by the end of each respective unit.

• Module 1 The Theme is The Power of Storytelling, and the Topic is Native Americans to Contemporary Poets. In this module, students examine storytelling as a personal, social, and cultural form of expression that we use to make sense of ourselves and our world.

Samples from the text selections include:

• The Crossover, by:Kwame Alexander. Alexander uses narrative in this novel to articulate and navigate the various experiences, personal relationships, sudden changes, and emerging awareness of self that shape—and unsettle—his adolescent life. As students relate to the vivid portrayals of Josh’s identity and struggles, the novel’s accessibility demystifies verse and empowers students to engage with poetry.
• The Man Made of Words, by N. Scott Momaday is a piece of literary nonfiction that elucidates the fundamental necessity of articulating ourselves through narrative.
• This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It), by Benedict Carey is a scientific account of how we use narratives of the past to shape our future.

• Module 3: The Theme is Power of Storytelling, and the Topic is What is Love? In this module, students examine a question that has vexed humans—and the world’s most renowned literary authors—for generations: What is love? Deceptively simple, this question requires students to examine ideas about the roles of individual choice, fate, power, and social status in the development of seemingly personal relations.

Sample of text include:

• A Midsummer’s Night Dream, by William Shakespeare. This comedy offers a compelling and humorous way for students to think about love. Shakespeare’s characters introduce multiple, conflicting perspectives about love and about its purpose, place, and power. Students see love wax and wane in the play through the action and inaction of those at love’s mercy.
• EPICAC, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a short story, even though comedic, raises ethical questions about the actions undertaken in the name of love.
• The Birthday, by Marc Chagall. Painted in 1915, the painting encourages students to analyze how elements such as line and color create very specific and stylized understandings of love.

All modules develop student knowledge through structured learning activities that provide effective scaffolding of content leading to students comprehending texts independently and proficiently.

The instructional materials for Grade 8 fully meet the expectations of materials that contain sets of coherently sequenced questions and tasks requiring students to analyze the language, key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts. Questions are organized into three categories: Focusing Questions, Content Framing Questions, and Craft Questions. Within the Content Framing and Craft Questions, there are additional categories of questions. The chart below demonstrates the structure of questions.

A representative example of how the program addresses this indicator comes from Module 1, Focusing Question #4: How do stories help us make sense of ourselves and the world?

Content Questions:

1. Distill: What are the central ideas of Your Brain on Fiction?
2. Organize: What’s happening in The Man Made of Words?
3. Reveal: What does a deeper exploration of word choice and phrases reveal about the power of stories in The Man Made of Words?
4. Know: How does The Danger of a Single Story build my knowledge of the power of stories?
5. Reveal: What do informational texts reveal about the power of stories?
6. Know: How do informational texts build my knowledge of the power of stories?

Craft Questions:

1. Examine and Experiment: How does incorporating textual evidence work?
2. Examine: How do complex and compound-complex sentences work?
3. Execute: How do I incorporate textual evidence in my writing?
4. Execute: How do I use knowledge of sentence structure to make my writing clear and interesting?
5. Excel: How do I incorporate the strongest evidence into Focusing Question Task 4?
6. Excel: How do I improve my use of sentence structures to make my writing interesting and clear?

Additional module 1 questions include:

• Lesson 1: Identify specific language choices that depict Josh Bell’s identity and view of himself.
• Lesson 9: Analyze how form contributes to meaning in a comparison of The Block and Children’s Games.
• Lesson 11: Analyze the impact of form on meaning by comparing how an informational article and the poem Fast Break construct accounts of a basketball game.
  

Module 2 questions include:

• Lesson 17: Explain how Paul’s encounters with civilians in his hometown reveal conflicting attitudes toward the war.
• Lesson 20: Interpret the meaning of the transformation depicted in the last passage of Chapter 7, and explain how it conveys an attitude toward the effects of war.
• Lesson 23: Analyze how Paul’s repeated use of the word comrade in Chapter 9 develops attitudes about the war and its effects.

Module 3 questions include:

• Lesson 21: Synthesize an understanding of how different points of view can complicate love.
• Lesson 26: Apply an understanding of central ideas in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and EPICAC, considering how actions taken by characters complicate love, through collaborative conversation with peers.
• Lesson 30: Analyze how the central idea of love as a fantasy has developed over the course of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the expectations for materials containing a coherently sequenced set of text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to analyze the integration of knowledge and ideas across both individual and multiple texts. There are limited questions used to assess reading comprehension and connect the reader to the text in a deeper way. Questions are employed to build students' knowledge.

Each module has a section entitled, “Major Assessments” for the teacher at the beginning of the module that displays all the “Focusing Question Tasks”, the standards involved, and the elements needed to be successful on the “End-of-Module (EOM)” culminating task. Also, each module contains a section entitled “Module Map” that discusses the “Focusing Question Tasks, Central Texts, Content Framing Questions, Craft Questions, and learning goals.” Many questions and tasks do not require students to demonstrate understanding of the text on multiple levels. Many of the questions do prepare students for an upcoming culminating writing task (EOM). In each module, students are presented with opportunities to work across texts.

Module 2:

• Write a three-paragraph explanatory essay that evaluates how a scene from Lewis Milestone’s 1930 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front interprets war’s effect on humanity compares to the novel.

Module 3:

• Delineate and evaluate an argument about love, and recognize strong evidence and various parts of an argument. Write two informative/explanatory paragraphs that explain and evaluate Helen Fisher’s argument in In the Brain, Romantic Love Is Basically an Addiction.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of love, and organize evidence clearly and appropriately to demonstrate reasons. Write two informative/explanatory paragraphs that explain how the love triangle in Kurt Vonnegut’s EPICAC draws on the complexities of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and also makes this pattern of events new.
• Identify a claim, include the strongest evidence to support a claim, and analyze different qualities of love. Read a new informational article, What is love? Five Theories on the Greatest Emotion of All. Respond to multiple-choice questions and then write two short-answer responses that explain aspects of arguments in the article.

The instructional materials for Grade 8 fully meet the expectations that questions and tasks support students’ ability to complete culminating tasks in which they demonstrate their knowledge of a theme (or, for grades 3-5. a topic) through integrated skills (e.g. combination of reading, writing, speaking, and listening). The sets of questions and tasks students are asked to work with and complete support their ability to complete culminating tasks in which they are demonstrating knowledge of topics and/or themes.

Each module has several Focusing Question Tasks that scaffold the material to aid in the successful completing of the EOM task. The materials contain sets of high-quality sequences of text-dependent questions and activities that build to each culminating task. Many tasks are focused on pieces of writing; however, students engage in speaking and listening as well as reading and writing to prepare for tasks, providing learning through integrated skills.

Some examples of culminating tasks that showcase students' demonstration of topics and themes through a combination of skills and print and nonprint texts include the following examples:

Module 3:

• The culminating task (End of Module-EOM) in Module 3 is as follows: “Write an argument essay that argues whether the outcome of a romantic relationship between two of the four lovers is directed by agency or fate.”
• This module features argument writing. Students practice in discrete and manageable steps, focusing on aspects such as evidence-based claims, argument structure, and alternate and opposing claims. With published texts and their peers’ works, students explain and evaluate the claims, logic, and validity of arguments. In formal writing assessments, students demonstrate their ability to construct arguments that include clear and persuasive claims, logical reasoning, relevant evidence, elaboration, an effective sequence with transitional language, and a conclusion. Some assignments that lead to the EOM task include: (1) Write four informative/explanatory paragraphs that identify and explain one character’s understanding of love from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (2) Write two informative/explanatory paragraphs that explain how the love triangle in Kurt Vonnegut’s EPICAC draws on the complexities of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and also makes this pattern of events new. (3) Read a new informational article, What is love? Five Theories on the Greatest Emotion of All. Respond to multiple-choice questions, and then write two short-answer responses that explain aspects of arguments in the article.
• Students build their speaking and listening skills and develop their work with argument writing by listening for a speaker’s logic and posing questions that connect ideas from multiple speakers in Socratic Seminars. One of the tasks is as follows: “Debate connections between love, imagination, and reality in all module texts, and consider whether or not love is something that can be defined as “real.’”
• Students are also presented with a plethora of print and nonprint texts to assist in successfully completing the EOM task. These texts include but not limited to: a short story: EPICAC by Kurt Vonnegut, a painting: The Birthday, by Marc Chagall, and a drama: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the expectations that materials include a cohesive, year-long plan for students to interact with and build key academic vocabulary words in and across texts. Vocabulary is taught both implicitly and explicitly, using words in the core and supplementary texts. As texts are read multiple times, students gain new vocabulary. Explicit vocabulary instruction focuses on Content Specific Vocabulary, Academic Vocabulary, and Text Critical Vocabulary. Materials focus on elements of vocabulary, such as abstract or multiple meanings, connotation, relationships among words, and morphology.

Vocabulary Routines can be found in the Resources section of the Implementation Guide and include routines and instructional examples such as the Frayer Model, Morpheme Matrix, Outside-In, Relationship Mapping, and Word Line. Teachers utilize Word Walls and Vocabulary Journals for students to record newly-acquired words and vocabulary strategies.

Appendix B includes vocabulary support that explains the implicit and explicit vocabulary instruction. For example, Core lessons, 75-min. daily: vocabulary study that is essential to understanding the text at hand. Instructional strategies are explicitly introduced and practiced during vocabulary instruction and put into practice during a reading of the text. Vocabulary Deep Dives: vocabulary instruction and practice that advances students’ knowledge of high-value words and word-solving strategies, focusing on aspects such as abstract or multiple meanings, connotation, relationships across words, and morphology. The appendix also includes a Module Word List and a list of words that would pose a challenge to student comprehension.

Examples include:

Module 2:

• Lesson 2 - Content Vocabulary: Patriotism and Nationalism
  
  • Learning Goal: Use the relationship between patriotism and nationalism to better understand the denotation and connotation of each word.
  • End of Lesson Task: Students write one reason from the perspective of a patriot and one from the perspective of a nationalist.
• Lesson 13 - Academic Vocabulary: Insubordination
  • Learning Goal: Use the relationship between insubordination, tedious, comradeship, bombardment, and wearisome to better understand insubordination.
  • End of Lesson Task: Students write an Exit Ticket in response to the following question: “Pretend you are Paul and must explain why Tjaden committed an act of insubordination.”
• Lesson 7: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Explore Academic Vocabulary: Beckons, Ostracized)
• Lesson 16: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Explore Academic Vocabulary: Sensibilities)

Module 3:

• Lesson 6 - Explore Academic Vocabulary: Aggravate, Obscenely
  • Learning Goal: Use context to predict the meaning of a word, consult a glossary to clarify its precise meaning, and determine the intended word’s meaning by using a dictionary.
  • End of Lesson Task: Students reread, using context clues to predict the meaning of the word obscenely. Then, students use a dictionary to verify the definitions of obscenely and seemly and explain how the mix-up is humorous.
• Lesson 7: Handout 7B Color, Symbol and Image
  • Complete the tables for the word dissension. Note that a symbol is a single object or representation of an image; however, an image is a snapshot or scene with a setting and action.

• Lesson 20 - Explore the morpheme “con”
  • Learning Goal: Use knowledge of the prefix con– to determine word meanings and to infer the significance of a key passage.
  • End of Lesson Task: Students complete a Connect-Extend-Challenge Exit Ticket: How does the meaning of con– connect to the passage as a whole? How does your knowledge of con– and the new words extend your understanding of the passage? Which parts of the passage are still challenging?

• Lesson 21: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Examine Morphemes ver and fall)

• Lesson 24: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Explore Academic Vocabulary: bluff, spared)

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the expectation 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. Students are supported through the writing process with focusing question tasks in each module that help scaffold the writing process for the final End of Module (EOM) product. Students receive feedback from peers, the teacher, and self-evaluations as well as being provided with writing checklist and rubrics to ensure that their writing skills are increasing throughout the year.

Through explicit learning-to-write instruction, teachers gradually release responsibility for a specific writing strategy through a series of lessons. One or more of the following Craft Stages shapes each lesson. (Implementation Guide)

• Examine: Students analyze how an exemplar models one or more writing strategies. The exemplar can come from authentic texts, class collaborative writing, or a module resource.
• Experiment: Students practice applying a target strategy. Scaffolded tasks provide significant support by limiting the volume of writing, providing parts of a writing piece, or focusing on a relatively simple topic.
• Execute: Students plan or draft a full writing piece, paying particular attention to applying the target strategy to support the purpose of the task.
• Excel: Students revise, edit, and respond to feedback on the pieces they drafted in the Execute stage, focusing on the target strategy. They reflect on their use of the strategy to refine their thinking about its use in current and future writing.

Students write an average of twenty or more minutes per writing lesson and are given explicit instruction of writing strategies. Students write both on-demand and process writing while accessing complex texts. There are a variety of writing performance tasks. Craft Lessons address 5 features; Structure, Development, Style, Conventions, and Process.

The following are examples of how materials are building students' writing skills across multiple modules:

Module 1:

• Focusing Question Task 1: Students read The Crossover, then synthesize an understanding of narrative form and Josh’s identity through the writing and analysis of an original list poem, using descriptive and sensory language.
• Focusing Question Task 2: Students write three ToSEEC (i.e., containing a Topic Statement, Evidence, Elaboration, and a Concluding Statement) paragraphs that compare and contrast the content and form of two poems from The Crossover.
• End-of-Module Task: Students write a portfolio of three poems that demonstrate an understanding of ideas of the power of stories, the effects of descriptive and sensory language, narrative arc, and the relationship between content and structure. Write a cover letter explaining and analyzing creative choices. Then, they perform the poetry portfolio for an audience, with attention to poetic expression.

Module 2:

• Students write a one-page letter from the point of view of a character from All Quiet on the Western Front that demonstrates an understanding of the conditions of the front and their effects on a soldier.
• Students read an excerpt from Chapter 3 of All Quiet on the Western Front. Students write a paragraph using a broad category that analyzes how descriptive and sensory language illustrates the soldiers’ experience on the front.
• Students participate in a Chalk Talk where they answer questions such as, "How does Paul describe the psychological effects of war?" They write down three pieces of evidence supporting their response.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the expectations 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. Modules are divided into Focus Questions that build knowledge of a topic using multiple texts. The focus questions all build to the End-of-Module Task that encompasses a module’s worth of texts and source materials. Students also complete shorter research projects throughout the modules. Teachers are also encouraged to use pausing points to complete student-led research projects. In every grade, at least one EOM Task focuses on a sustained research project. In addition, students conduct a variety of short research projects throughout the year.

Examples include:

• Module 1: Students will explore how Josh, the protagonist of The Crossover, uses narrative to articulate and navigate the experiences, relationships, changes, and emerging awareness of self that shape his adolescent life. Students get insight into storytelling by examining poetic performances by Bassey Ikpi, Nikki Giovanni, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Students explore these linguistically and stylistically diverse examples of narrative verse to understand the impact of oral expression and the role of poetic form in creating meaning. After producing their own poetic performances, students broaden their focus to examine the large-scale impact of stories. Two informational articles additionally provide students with examples of the fundamental necessity of articulating ourselves through narrative. For their End-of-Module (EOM) Task, students apply their knowledge of contemporary poetry to their contemporary experience. Devising their own narrative-in-verse, they work deeply with form and craft to make meaning of an important experience, creating a story by capturing essential moments with poetic precision and pacing. Framed with an explanatory cover letter, the students’ EOM Task communicates an understanding of their sense of self and the power of storytelling.
• Module 4: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice illuminates and re-evaluates the contributions different people made to the Civil Rights Movement. Students consider Claudette Colvin’s contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in relation to a range of historical events, actors, and ideas. Reading of this core text also launches deeper historical exploration of the Civil Rights Movements, with students gaining insight into the choices of its leadership and deepening their understanding of the network of actions and strategies that challenged segregation in the mid-1950s. Students gain knowledge of how social change occurs through the development of a series of strategies, actions, and responses performed by different people with different roles. This understanding provides context for students’ research on a teen change agent’s actions and impact. For their End-of-Module (EOM) Task, students present the research they have been engaged in throughout the module. Students write an informative essay based on their research and turn that essay into a multimedia presentation.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 8 meet the expectations for materials providing a design, including accountability, for how students will regularly engage in a volume of independent reading either in or outside of class. The majority of lessons require some independent readings of text followed by text-specific questions and tasks that reflect student accountability. Students are asked to annotate texts. Additionally, most homework assignments include independent readings and tasks that require students to produce evidence of reading and to keep an independent reading log.

• Lesson 7: Students reread Chapter 1 from All Quiet on the Western Front and, in their Response Journals, write two sentences that explain “when” and “where” the novel takes place. Students will work with “why” throughout the module and in subsequent lessons.
• Lesson 14: Students read pages 123–136 of All Quiet on the Western Front, from “My hands grow cold and my flesh creeps” to “Thirty-two men,” and annotate for incidents and the corresponding emotional responses (or lack of responses) of men in the Second Company.