CORE KNOWLEDGE 8th GRADE CURRICULUM

All students are expected to read a book a week through the La Cumbre Accelerated Reader program. Students will learn the 8th grade standards in language arts and the 8th grade standards in social studies, which cover U.S. history from the framing of the Constitution through World War I. Because this is partially a review for 8th grade Core Knowledge students, they will not only study topics more deeply but will also extend the social studies timeline later into the 20th century. Students will also study the following:

Etymology and Expressions

  • Latin and Greek roots
  • Foreign Phrases (savoir-faire, avant-garde, bête noire, etc.)

Novels and Plays

  • William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
  • Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth
  • Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  • George Orwell - Animal Farm

Poetry

  • e.e. cummings - "Buffalo Bill's"
  • Dylan Thomas - "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning - "How Do I Love Thee"
  • Robert Browning - "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"
  • Perce Shelley - "Ozymandias"
  • Gwendolyn Brooks - "We Real Cool"
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins - "Spring and Fall"
  • William Wordsworth - "My Heart Leaps Up" and "Lucy Gray, or Solitude"
  • William Shakespeare - "Sonnet 18"
  • William Butler Yeats - "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
  • Robert Frost - "Mending Wall" and "The Gift Outright"
  • Langston Hughes - "Theme for English B"
  • Carl Sandburg - "Chicago"
  • Edward Arlington Robinson - "Mr. Flood’s Party"

Short Stories, Essays, and Speeches

  • Anton Chekov - "The Bet"
  • Stephen Crane - "The Open Boat"
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment"
  • Betty Smith - "A Christmas Wish"
  • Mona Gardner - "The Dinner Party"
  • Leo Tolstoy - "God Sees the Truth but Waits"
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky - "An Honest Thief"
  • W.W. Jacobs - "The Monkey's Paw"
  • Sandra Cisneros - "Eleven"

History

  • Decline of European Colonialism
  • The Cold War
  • The Civil Rights Movement

Geography (20th Century)

  • Canada
  • Mexico

8th grade Core Knowledge students also have the opportunity to take an elective course and are encouraged to explore La Cumbre’s offerings in foreign language, industrial technology, video/tech production, instrumental music, art, mathematics and design, leadership, and yearbook production.

All 8th grade students at La Cumbre—including Core Knowledge students—have the optional opportunity in the spring to travel to Washington, D.C. and New York to study U.S. history and culture.