Course Outline

Grade 8 Language Arts and Social Studies

Materials needed-

-Writing utensils 

-Paper

-A binder divided into several sections

-A writing notebook, which could be a notebook, duotang, or scribbler. Not a binder.

-A library card. 

Course Outline for Language Arts

Communication skills are essential and ever changing in our society. With the understanding that all students can be successful learners, students in 6A will be exploring a wide range of how language works, making full use of a modern computer lab. Over the course of the year, we will incorporate the Grade Eight Social Studies curriculum in our Language Art activities. 

           

The provincial curriculum uses the activities of Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Viewing and Representing to develop the outcomes (skills) that students are expected to acquire. 

Grade 8 ELA Essential Learning Outcomes
Reading and Responding ·         understands key ideas and messages ·         interprets a variety of texts ·         responds critically to a variety of texts	Writing ·         generates, selects, and organizes ideas ·         chooses language to have an impact on reader ·         uses conventions and resources to edit and proofread
Communication ·         uses oral and visual strategies for effective communication ·         listening, speaking, viewing, representing	Managing Ideas and Information ·         Research skills (create and follow a plan, use graphic organizers to record information) ·         Organizing information (categorizing, comparing/contrasting, sorting/classifying)

 More details about the curriculum can be found here 

and here 

Course Outline for Social Studies

The Provincial Curriculum is here. The course is about 200,000 years of history, so during the year we won't be going into great depth on any particular time period. What will be important is understanding the trends and patterns that exist throughout history. The four main outcomes for Social Studies in Manitoba and what we will be focusing on during the school year are:

1. Communication
2. Managing Ideas and Information
3. Critical and Creative Thinking
4. Democratic Citizenship

The first two outcomes are important skills to have as the student moves through school and life. The last two skills are vital to produce the kind of society we want to live in and avoid something like this or to deal with this before it is too late.

As we jump from one period of history to another, the class will be asked for their interests and class lectures and activities will be tailored to those interests. During the year we will also be making use of project based learning so that the students can focus on parts of history that they find to be the most interesting.

Much of the course can be described as the history of the Western World. Western thought, customs, religion, etc was predominant in the creation of Canada and remains a dominating influence and point of view in our country. What we have to remember is that other points of view exist and that before Europeans came to Canada, the people here had their own religion, own system of government, a process to educate their children, languages, etc. 

This iTunes U course is a supplement to the actual course, which is delivered in class and on this blog. Supplemental links can also be found here. 

Some points to consider as we start our course:

What is History? Who makes it? Who writes it? How has it affected our country, The province we live in, Our city, YOU? 

Here is the class Edmodo Code hw7vt6

Here is the kidblog  code pvw4vy3