Curriculum - English

The English curriculum at BB&N Middle School is intended to teach students to read with pleasure and insight and to write with clarity and confidence. Students are encouraged to acquire careful study techniques, to use their imaginations, and to develop sound reasoning as they learn to read and write with increasing enthusiasm and proficiency.

In the seventh grade English curriculum, students become increasingly aware of authors' critical choices and so become more accurate and thoughtful readers and writers themselves. Students write with increasing accuracy and depth as they expand the structure and range of their own sentences and ultimately write several longer pieces, including analytical paragraphs and stories.

Grade 7: The “Portraits” unit, which spans the fall semester, guides students to read closely and make reasonable inferences – first by developing a number of close observation skills in studying visual portraits, and then by applying those techniques to the more abstract medium of written language. Throughout the year, students practice and deepen their close reading and analytic skills through studying and considering thematic ideas in excerpts of biographies and autobiographies, short stories, novels and poems.

Students develop the skills of effective time management, notebook organization, underlining and margin noting, vocabulary development and grammatical analysis. Short-term assignments, frequent reading quizzes, and an emphasis on class participation help students practice careful and prompt preparation. Long–term writing assignments and more open-ended projects allow students to explore their creativity while they learn to plan and execute their ideas responsibly.

Grade 8: Eighth grade English students consider ideas in literature in increasingly abstract terms and make exciting leaps in understanding relationships within and between readings. Through discussion, writings, and activities, students find parallels within literature and between these works and their own lives. Writing assignments grow out of the ideas and strategies identified in the reading and include stories, descriptive and personal paragraphs, analytic essays and poetry.

The theme is “the journey” or quest, beginning with the summer reading, Geeks by John Katz. Other texts studied during the year include selections from The Perilous Journey, an anthology of readings in a wide variety of genres, The Old Man and the Sea, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Our approach to the play gives students an opportunity to explore Shakespeare from multiple perspectives, including language analysis, characterization and performance. Study skills introduced in the Seventh Grade are reinforced in the Eighth Grade curriculum. Class time is devoted to discussion, group work, peer editing, acting, short writing exercise, grammatical analysis and other activities which help students hone their reading and writing skills.