Practices for these sports will occur during the physical education period. Some students may elect to take a Fine Arts course or they may take a study mod during the Eighth Grade year. Language Arts 8 Eighth Grade students continue to build upon the thinking and writing skills acquired in the Seventh Grade. Prewriting, drafting, and revising techniques are at the center of instruction with continued work on the mechanics of writing and grammar as these topics surface in the context of individual writing assignments. Students continue to read in a variety of literary genres and to respond to reading assignments through classroom discussions and reader-response journals.
Vocabulary improvement includes a special emphasis on roots and prefixes.
Eighth Grade students enrolled in Transition to Algebra will strengthen their arithmetic skills and will develop a basic understanding of the general concepts involved in the study of algebra. Through practice and applications, students develop skills in dealing with the essentials of a first-year algebra course, including properties of and operation with real numbers, linear and quadratic equations, inequalities, polynomials, rational expressions, radicals, problem solving, factoring, and graphing. If they are successful in this course, they will be prepared for the remainder of the High School mathematics curriculum. This lab-oriented course emphasizes the everyday applications of physical laws. It is an introduction to methods and information important in both physics and chemistry.