This full-year curriculum designed for grade 8 students explores the essential question, What does it mean to grow up? Across the year, students build foundational analytical writing and discussion skills, moving from a highly structured literary analysis paragraph to a full, multi-paragraph essay. Writing instruction is explicit and cumulative, with sustained practice in making claims, integrating evidence, and explaining analysis clearly and coherently.

Through discussion, close reading, and creative writing, students examine literary representations of growing up while also considering their own evolving identities. The academic expectations are serious, but the curriculum also allows ample space for self-exploration. 

This full-year curriculum designed for grade 9 students explores the essential question, What masks do we wear? What do we show and hide? Across the year, students build on foundational writing and discussion skills. Analytical expectations are serious: students craft nuanced claims, engage deeply with structure and authorial choices, and develop essays that call for intellectual maturity.

While students engage in some creative assignments, the emphasis is on argumentation, synthesis, and academic rigor. Students leave the year as more confident writers and more disciplined thinkers.