8th Grade Curriculum Timeline by Ms.Spell

Unit 0: Getting to Know Students

2024-01-17 23:13:15 UTC

Getting to know students and building relationships-- Aki Core 4 chart, surveys, name games, classroom routines & procedures

8th Grade Scope and Sequence

2024-01-17 23:13:48 UTC

8th Grade History

2024-01-17 23:14:55 UTC

Unit One: A Different Mirror and the Danger of a Single Story- Understanding that there is a Euro-centric "Master Narrative" that has traditionally dominated how "Americans" learn our history. So, we use a "Different Mirror" approach, as using different mirrors to examine our complicated history allows us to be wiser. We accentuate this with a deep dive on "The Danger of a Single Story" and how the more varied historical knowledge you have, the better you are at either not making assumptions, or catching yourself when you do.

Unit 0 - Identity

2024-01-17 23:14:59 UTC

Students read and reflect on several texts about identity. They reflect on who they are and how their background can impact their worldviews. Reading texts about characters who's identities are impacted by their surroundings.

End with Identity Project and Identity Web and written reflection

Texts: Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

My Name - Sandra Ciseneros

Skills: self reflection, power point presentations, speaking and listening, analyzing stories (character), note taking, making claims

Relationship Building, getting to know each other, making and talking through identity webs. Background knowledge of students and figuring out how to connect with them. Build trust. Identity project.

Unit 1: Harnessing Human Energy

2024-01-17 23:16:00 UTC

Students engage in problem solving around a portable energy source for rescue workers. Students struggle through identifying the sources of energy they use day-to-day, and learn the steps of how energy gets transferred to our devices.

Unit 2: Force and Motion

2024-01-17 23:16:21 UTC

Students are familiar with forces (pushes and pulls) and collisions between objects, so they can bring a lot of prior knowledge (e.g., sports, bumper cars, grocery carts, differences in mass).

Unit 3: Force and Motion Engineering Internship

2024-01-17 23:16:42 UTC

This unit includes the Egg Drop, one of our most engaging hands-on projects. Students are naturally curious problem solvers, designers and builders, and this unit does a good job tapping into their engineering skills.

Unit 4: Magnetic Fields

2024-01-17 23:16:58 UTC

Unit 5: Light Waves

2024-01-17 23:17:26 UTC

Students figure out that melanin protects their DNA from UV light from the Sun. The unit highlights advantages/positive aspects of melanin in our skin. Students review world maps and may identify with countries of origin.

Unit 7: Traits and Reproduction

2024-01-17 23:17:41 UTC

Students figure out where their traits come from and engage in discussions around similarities and differences among siblings and parents.

Unit 8: Natural Selection

2024-01-17 23:17:55 UTC

Students bring prior knowledge of adaptations that they recognize (especially camouflage and mimicry).

Unit 1 - Critical Literacy

2024-01-17 23:18:20 UTC

Students, with identities in mind, learn to have a critical eye in their reading by examining identity of the characters in their chosen novel. They then examine power (power dynamics, systems, sources of power).

Texts: Pride - Ibi Zoboi

The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas

Student texts vary because they get to chose and by level

Skills: finding evidence, analysis, windows and mirrors, micro aggressions, gender norms, analyzing media

Building Relationships: talking about social issues, real world connections we all face. Windows and Mirrors, talking about blind spots.

Unit 9: Natural Selection Engineering Internship

2024-01-17 23:18:26 UTC

Unit Two: The Land of Fire and a "Created Paradise"

2024-01-17 23:18:45 UTC

Unit Two: This unit focuses on the science, history, and practice of continental indigenous fire management, as a way to cultivate a "human friendly" environment. It sets the stage for understanding the scale, depth, and range of indigenous knowledge, but also the scale of impact that people had on North America before the European story here began. This is in lieu of specific narratives about any particular tribe, since there are hundreds and we don't want to introduce any one (a single story!) to frame all "Native American Cultures."

Unit 10: Evolutionary History

2024-01-17 23:18:56 UTC

Unit 6: Sexual Health Education

2024-01-17 23:19:38 UTC

This unit is directly related to students health and relationships.

Unit 2 - Lit Non Fiction Trevor Noah

2024-01-17 23:20:16 UTC

Students focus on social issues, theme, and central ideas in their reading of Trevor Noah's Born A Crime. They learn apartheid history and how social issues can impact personal stories (cause and effect).

Text: Born a Crime - Trevor Noah students read independently and listen to the audiobook

Skills: Non fiction reading, note taking, central ideas, social issues, cause and effect in reading, themes, systemic issues (apartheid),

Relationship building: personal narratives, sharing as teacher and listening to and understanding students - conferring with students on their narrative. Brainstorming moments and obstacles. Knowledge of students helps us meet them where they are. Trevor Noah- reading about peoples' lives and connecting to them

The "Old World" of Northern Africa and Europe

2024-01-17 23:20:52 UTC

Unit Three: investigating the context/causes of Europe governmental expansion: what was "going on" in the Mediterranean World (Europe and Northern Africa) that would make anyone WANT to explore/colonize other places?

Students analyze the connection between conflict, economics, population pressures, class, and the popularization of the idea of "race" in Europe, starting with Portugal Royalty's push into West African trade.

Unit 3 - Non Fiction Reading

2024-01-17 23:21:39 UTC

Students research topics such as, media representation race gender sexuality and fast fashion. Final project is a group podcast and final write about the topic of their choice (from the list above).

Skills: note taking, chunk and chew, central idea, synthesizing notes, research, essay writing/structure, claims,

Building Relationships: representation in the media - how students perceive themselves and how they perceive the world. Wanting to make a change in the world.

Unit Four: The English Colonize the Irish, Civilization, and Savagery

2024-01-17 23:24:43 UTC

This Unit we explore the context of why English leaders were interested in colonizing anyone else at all. We talk about competition with Spain (economically) as well as religious identity (Protestant v. Catholic). We begin analyzing the connection between a colonizing power, the people being colonized, and the laws that people create to control OTHER people. We focus on how English ideas about "civilized" and "savage" categories, based on religion, geography, culture, started with the people of Ireland.

Unit 4 - Dystopian

2024-01-17 23:24:57 UTC

Students read dystopian novels and examine features of dystopian society and then power and responses power. Students form book clubs based on their choice book. Includes study of real world reflection.

Final product: dystopian world project, short dystopian stories set in the world they created.

Text: Ponies Kij Johnson

Student choice for dystopian novels

Skills: critical reading of power and rights, note taking, book club talks, discussion, presenting, group work, responses to power

Math 8 simplified

2024-01-17 23:25:36 UTC

Solving 2 step equations - bags and coins - solving for unknown variables
Finding slope and y intercept - how steep is the line (constant rate of change), where does it start
Functions - every input has one output
Bivariate data - how to read a scatter plot and define trends
Systems of equations - when do 2 lines (from linear equations) meet - how can we compare constant rates of change.
Real Numbers: Rationals and exponents (scientific notation)
Right Triangle Theorem - pythagorean
Translations - congruence - simlarity (are those triangles alike or exactly alike)
Surface area and volume - cover the shape vs fill the shape.

Unit 5 - Argument

2024-01-17 23:27:03 UTC

Topic: Parent Surveillance, Is there a right way to Protest?

Students investigate different issues and research in order to write an argumentative essay. Focus on strong note taking, making claims, pro-cons, central ideas, stuff like that.

Unit Five: The English, the Powhatan, and the Legend of Pocahontas

2024-01-17 23:28:48 UTC

This unit helps students connect how preconceived ways of thinking (e.g. "civilized v. savage) frame how different cultural groups either get along, or not. We analyze how "history" and "memory" are different, since there are stories of how America started in Jamestown that are based on stories, and what people THINK they know, then there is the more complicated history (the most we can know based on primary sources). Students compared the two by reading different accounts of the history, and then in contrast with the Disney portrayal of Pocahontas.

Poetry and Song Analysis

2024-01-17 23:32:54 UTC

Students reflect on their values and find songs and poems of their choosing that reflect those values. Emphasis on identity, symbolism, and metaphor. Final product: written analysis and presentation.

Unit Six: Opportunity or Oppression: Virginia and the Origins of Racialized Law in America

2024-01-17 23:40:56 UTC

This unit students analyze/compare the timelines of English economic development (tobacco farms), social caste (indentured servants v. aristocracy/landowners), geographic origin (West Africa v. Northern Europe), and the English idea of Race. Students compare how Englishmen changed laws over time, based on economic changes, and ideas about superiority, inferiority, and power. Students use primary sources as well as secondary to explain their OWN understanding of how Englishmen changed Virginia laws steadily over the 1600s to result in legalized chattel slavery. Students explore their own take on differences between laws that limit many/most freedoms (e.g. indenture laws) vs. laws that take away all freedoms (e.g. enslavement). The primary narrative focuses on the leadup to and consequences of Bacon's Rebellion.

Unit Seven: Origins of Our American Arguments

2024-01-17 23:50:00 UTC

We EXPAND our narrative scope! Students do an independent research project on one of 9 specific "American Cultures" based partly on a model from "American Nations" by Colin Woodard. We have expanded, enhanced, and balance the text so that students can choose to read about specific colonizing cultures. They investigate: why specific communities left (or were forced to leave) the "Old World", their engagement with First Nations, understanding of "Freedom, Rights, and Government", and social design/differences (e.g. family/gender roles). Students collaborate in different structures for study groups for debate, discussion, and presentation. We connect it with contemporary debates, and cultural similarities and differences region-to-region. The regions break down this way: New England (states of New England), New Netherlands (New York City), the Deep South, El Norte (The Gulf Coast, Texas, New Mexico, AZ), The Borderlanders (Scots-Irish in Appalachia), the Midlands (New Jersey, into Pennsylvania and beyond), the Tidewater (Maryland, Virginia, and "New France (Canada, and Louisiana).

Unit 6: Scientific Notation

2024-02-14 16:26:13 UTC

Students are learning that scientists created a way to simplify large and tiny numbers. They are working with real-world problems and solving them using this concept

Unit 6: Exponents

2024-02-14 16:27:16 UTC

Students learning how to write repeated multiplication as exponents. Using this, students are able to solve equations using PEMDAS

Unit 1 -Life Skills

2024-02-14 16:28:05 UTC

Building your high school and beyond plan: Naviance 1

2024-03-06 16:23:43 UTC

Learning about selecting high school course.

Naviance Lesson 2: Understanding workforce demands and future job earnings.

2024-03-06 17:57:02 UTC

Learning to read a pay stub and basic payroll concepts while exploring future job earning based on the workforce demand

Career College Readiness:

2024-03-06 18:00:11 UTC

Applying knowledge, skills, and understanding personal strengths to achieve personal goals.