Grade 6 Academic Literacy Course Description:

This course supports the transition to middle school by helping students understand and navigate the increased literacy demands of reading and writing to learn across all subjects. With an emphasis on nonfiction informational text, data, and informational writing, students will strengthen their ability to comprehend, summarize, analyze, interpret, and make connections within and across texts. Students will enrich their vocabulary and literacy skills through choice reading, shared reading experiences, and research opportunities. This is an interactive class that encourages critical thinking based on reading, writing, and discussion that is a foundation for the skills that will be developed in 7th and 8th grade.

7th-Grade Academic Literacy Course Description:

The purpose of this course is for students to read more deeply.  Effective reading requires students to interact with texts in an effort to construct and negotiate meaning. Students will expand their understanding of literacy strategies in order to further develop critical thinking and metacognitive reading skills. Throughout this course, students will be taught explicit reading strategies that enable them to monitor themselves as readers and their comprehension of varying texts and genres. Students will also be able to identify their own areas of interest and learn how to access a variety of materials to read for academic and pleasure purposes.

8th-Grade Academic Literacy Course Description:

The purpose of this course is for students to review and extend literacy skills practiced in the seventh grade course. Throughout this course, students will build critical thinking skills to access, analyze, and evaluate more complex texts.  Students will continue to develop extensive reading and metacognitive conversations through inquiry-based learning.  In addition, students will identify, analyze, and evaluate textual claims and evidence in order to establish their own substantiated claims or positions.  Students will develop as readers and thinkers through exploration of personal, informational, visual, and communication literacy.