What I’m Teaching Now

Teaching eighth grade English at UPCS, I have been given a lot of freedom and flexibility to teach whatever specific content I would like. There is no set curriculum for the 8th grade students, but rather I have been given a few goals that I would like my students to achieve by the end of the year. Together, we have been focusing on being specific, giving evidence to back up our claims, and working on our narrative and creative writing. In future units, we will look more at informational texts, and also try more expository writing.

Before I took over as the lead teacher in the classroom, my mentor teacher and I co-taught a unit on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, working together to co-direct a production of the play with the whole eighth grade. Our next unit has been a poetry unit, with a focus on listening to, writing, and experiencing poetry. Future units will be centered around developing and negotiating identity while reading Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and a unit on doing research and understanding informational texts.