Middle School Syllabus
Goals: Students will improve their reading skills by gaining an understanding
of theme, author’s purpose, and a comprehensive level of poetry. They will
also develop their grammar in daily writing, continue their letter-writing
skills by mastering the business letter, as well as write essays to improve
sentence fluency, proofreading skills, and sentence variety.
Novels
Students will read novels centering on the theme, “survival.” While we all
have our own survival stories, there are those in literature that teach us not
only to stand up to adversity but do it with strength, courage, and selfassurance. The three novels are:
 Island of the Blue Dolphins- Scott O’Dell
 My Side of the Mountain- Jean Craighead George
 Call it Courage- Armstrong Sperry
1st Quarter, Review
Basic Essay format, MLA headings
My Side of the Mountain- Jean Craighead
Business Letter- SW 348
Parts of Speech- 69-93
Parts of Speech II- 99-115
The Dinner Party- 28
7th Grade- 30
Casey at the Bat- 128
Dark they were, and Golden Eyed- 444
Narrative Essay- SW 6
2nd Quarter
Call it Courage- Armstrong Sperry
Usage- 50-56
Sentence Structure- 9-33
The Three Century Woman- 240
Encounter with Martin Luther King, jr. – 258
Eleanor Roosevelt- 760
Research Report- SW 248
3rd Quarter
Grammar - 159-177
Begin Island of the Blue Dolphins
Who are you, little i?- 517
Old Age Sticks- 510
Two Limericks- 598
A Word is dead- 543
The courage that my Mother had- 547
The World is not a Pleasant Place to be- 566
Anabel Lee- 567
The Charge of the Light Brigade- 570
Two Haiku- 582
Jabberwocky- 592
Create your own Poem
4th Quarter
Sentence Structure II- 39-63
Complete Island of the Blue Dolphins
What do you know about sharks?- 872
Great White Sharks- 884
Pro-Athletes salaries aren’t exorbitant- 918
Do professional Athletes get paid too much? -922
Why work out/ The Promise -912
Persuasive Essay -SW 326
Textbooks Used
Short readings, poems, excerpts: McDougall Littell Ohio Revised Student
Textbook.
Essay and writing material: Strategies for Writers, Zaner-Bloser
Grammar: Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics (G.U.M.) Workbook, Zaner- Bloser