Grade 8 Writing: goals and how we get there
A grade 8 writing student at Learn To Be does three things:
- Writes full essays, from outline to final draft.
- Writes about what they read.
- Practices a little every day (at home!).
The goal and what success looks like
By the end of grade 8, a student is ready for high school writing. In one sitting, they write a solid five-paragraph essay on a topic they know. The essay is typed, revised, and clean. Every high school class will ask them for this kind of essay.
The student can go from outline to final draft in one session, with a time limit.
Everything from earlier grades stays correct.
Typing goal: the student types 45 words per minute. This is the last typing goal.
The course
We do not have a grade 8 writing course. Use Essay Foundations Grade 7 (55 lessons). It covers thesis statements, the three-point thesis, and argument essays.
- If your student has not finished it, work through it first. Try the first few lessons. If they are easy, skip ahead to where the student starts making mistakes.
- If your student has finished it, spend the session on full essays about what they read.
If the course is too hard, go down to Paragraph Mastery Grade 6.
What they write about
Kids cannot write about nothing. They write about what they read. The topics come from this grade's reading program:
- The Decline of European Colonialism
- The Cold War
- The Civil Rights Movement
- The Vietnam War and Social Change
- The Middle East and Oil Politics
- The End of the Cold War
- Electricity and Magnetism
- Sound and Light Waves
- The Physics of Motion
- The Chemistry of Food
A typical session
- Warm-up, about 10 minutes. Quick sentence practice. Make a short sentence longer. Join two sentences into one. Finish a sentence that starts with "because", "but", or "so".
- Course lessons or a full essay. This is the main part of the session. Do one or two lessons together. After the student finishes the course, the student writes and revises a full essay instead.
- Write about what they read. The student writes about something from their reading. The reading gives them something to say.
Between sessions (at home)
Daily practice happens at home, not in your session. A little every day works better than a lot once a week.
Tell the parent:
"Every day, have your child sign in at learntobe.org and do a lesson in their writing course. A little every day helps most."
If your student has finished the course, tell the parent to have the child read every day from a book about one of the topics above.
Show the parent and the student how to sign in and find the course during your first session.
Other resources
- IXL. If your student has an IXL account through our pilot, its diagnostic shows the grade level your student works at in each part of English language arts. Use it as an extra check, not instead of the course. See How should tutors use IXL?