I am always ready to learn, I just don’t always like being taught!
Winston Churchill

January brings a fresh beginning and I generally find the three winter months very productive. They know the “program” and are able to focus on the important concepts! All three grades are well schooled in parts of speech, the understanding of literary terms, and the expansion of vocabulary words. Now the processes of analysis, application, and evaluation are emphasized.

Eighth grade will be completing their final unit on the short story genre. They have genuinely enjoyed such noted international authors as O’Henry, Saki, Chekhov and Maupassant. In each story we go beyond the basic literary elements and into the context in which the story was written and authored. So many good stories and so little time! While we review the functions of various parts of speech in writing, our grammar continues its emphasis on editing and revision. We model different types of paragraphs and are amazed at how many versions the same facts can create in the hands of the individual student.

Seventh grade embarks on the classic novel, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway: big fish tale? Christian allegory? an end of life story? No class is unfazed by the multiple layers of meaning folded into this novel. Grammar finds us operating as experts on parts of speech and moving into diagramming! Parts of speech expand to the next level, functions of those parts of speech! It begins to get complicated for some! Composition ranges from modeling Hemingway’s style to a month of intense “Topic Tickets” whereby we write a mastery paragraph each week following the Jane Shaeffer formula for literary analysis.

Sixth grade literature will focus on the addition of more literary terms and their application to non-fiction essays of all types. We will read such notable authors as James Thurber, Annie Dillard, Jon Krakauer, and Alice Walker. They actually learn to believe that “truth IS stranger than fiction!” Grammar becomes quite intensive with composition. Like seventh grade, we will work on the Jane Shaeffer Writing System which begins in sixth grade with learning the difference between fact and opinion! It sounds easy but can be rather tricky! In Vocabulary we will expand our sentences by applying our knowledge of conjunctions and prepositional phrases.