Students in eighth grade English read literature from a variety of genres that allow them to gain a better understanding of how factors such as culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, gender, and history influence different people’s ideas, behaviors, and opinions, and affect relationships. Students continue to hone their critical reading skills by looking more closely at character development, theme, setting, conflict, figurative language, and point of view. They are introduced to literary elements such as tone, irony, dialect, and allusion and begin to see how authors use these elements to convey ideas. Analysis and reactions to literature form the basis of their written work. Students are taught how to look more critically at the significance of their evidence in order to support a central argument. They also learn how an author’s intention can be a subject for analysis (theme) and how to make inferences from lines in a text to support an idea. Grammar instruction primarily focuses on using commas and semi-colons correctly and avoiding comma splices and agreement errors. Students engage in interdisciplinary work as some of the literature is chosen to complement their studies in history class (immigration, Civil Rights). Each year students attend a professional theatrical production in Philadelphia.