English Language Arts, Grade 8 Module 1

Paths to College and Career is a new, comprehensive English Language Arts curriculum for grades 6 to 12 built from the ground up over a three-year period to address the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts and Literacy.  It reflects a deep understanding of the standards and assessments, and is written with a focus on the shifts in instructional practice and student experiences the standards require. It includes daily lesson plans, guiding questions, recommended texts, scaffolding strategies, and other classroom resources. Paths to College and Career provides teachers, schools, and districts with a concrete and practical ELA instructional program that engages students with compelling and complex texts.  At each grade level, Paths to College and Career delivers a yearlong curriculum that develops all students’ ability to •                read closely and engage in text-based discussions, •                build evidence-based claims and arguments, •                conduct research and write from sources, and •                expand their academic vocabulary. Paths to College and Career’s instructional resources address the needs of all learners, including students with disabilities, English language learners, and gifted and talented.  The curriculum is flexible, user friendly, engaging, and purposefully built to prepare students for career, college, and life. In Module 1 of Grade 8, students will develop their ability to read and understand complex text as they consider the challenges of fictional and real refugees.  Students will read Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai, analyzing how critical incidents reveal the dynamic nature of the main character, Ha, a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl whose family is deciding whether to flee during the fall of Saigon.   Students will build their ability to infer and analyze text, both in discussion and through writing. They then will read informational text to learn more about the history of war in Vietnam, and the specific historical context of Ha’s family’s struggle during the fall of Saigon.   Students will work in research groups to study the experiences of refugees from one of several cultures, and use this knowledge to write to write two, free verse narrative poems that capture the universal refugee experience.