reading Grades 6 to 8 Live now

Reading and Writing Grades 6 to 8

Reading and Writing Grades 6 to 8 is a 12-week middle-school English language arts course that uses only a notebook and a pencil. The crew turns a porch corner into the Signal Desk and publishes The Signal, a small neighborhood paper, and every week's reading teaches a skill the week's writing needs. Students cite evidence from a text, find a theme and write an objective summary, follow how a plot and its characters change, weigh word choice and tone, see how a narrator's point of view shapes a story, read informational texts for structure and central idea, trace an argument and judge its evidence, and compare a poem with a story. They write a narrative, an explanation and an argument for The Signal, then plan, revise and edit for Press Day. Every passage is original fiction or writing about the crew's own neighborhood, apart from two public-domain poems named in the sources. Short daily lessons, a Writing Lab each week and a Saturday Press Day. 100% free, start to finish.

• Cite textual evidence for what a text says explicitly and for inferences, and write an objective summary of its theme or central idea
• Describe how a plot unfolds and how characters change, how a narrator's point of view shapes a story, and how a sentence, scene or stanza fits the whole
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases in context, including figurative and connotative meanings, and explain how word choice sets tone
• Read informational texts for central idea and structure, trace an argument and judge whether its reasoning and evidence hold up
• Write a narrative, an explanation and an argument with a clear organization, relevant details or evidence, transitions and a conclusion
• Plan, revise and edit writing for clarity, and use standard punctuation and sentence structure