What's Happening in the Eighth Grade?

Welcome to 8th grade ELA! My name is Cheri Omernick and this is my first year teaching at the GET Middle School, and the 29th year of my teaching career. I'm looking forward to a fantastic year!

The year has been amazing. It's been a joy to see the students grow as readers and writers!

STAR Testing: Wednesday, January 8

Unit 2 Assessment on Theme and Academic Vocabulary: January 13-14

Materials are on the StudySync app and in a StudySync workbook that is provided.

Language Arts

Unit 3: No Risk, No Reward

Essential Question: Why do we take chances?
Genre Focus: Informational Text
Extended Writing Project: Argumentative and Informative

Several excerpts and the novel Call of The Wild by Jack London will be studied.

Unit 2: Past and Present is almost complete. The novel Outsiders by S.E.Hinton as well as poetry and several excerpts were read and analyzed.

Grammar is an important part or becoming a better reader and writer. Writing improvement is a focus for Term 3. Sentence structure, word choice, and fluency work will be implemented during Core classes and Target Time.

Beyond the Classroom: ELA

Math

We are officially through September. Welcome to October!

We are finishing up:

Unit 1 (Rigid Transformations/congruence).

Our assessment is taking place on October 2nd.

What can I GUARENTEE I know from Unit 1

Rigid Transformations (Translations, Rotations, Reflections)
Congruent Figures
Properties of Parallel Lines

Unit 2 Topics

Scaling/Dilations
Similarity of Polygons
Slope

The units were reordered to align with learning goals for 8th grade. HERE is the link that takes you to the family version of our online book.

Beyond the Classroom: Math

Social Studies

In the last part of April, students will be learning about important innovations in Early American history. They will read about the inventions and learn about the inventions through informal debates. Lastly, the students will choose an innovation and create a persuasive advertisement selling this innovation.

The Innovation Ad will be due on April 17th. Students will be given a description and rubric in class. They must complete the writing section first, and then draw or create a digital advertisement.

Questions to ask your student-

What early invention did you think was the most important?

Railroads? Steam powered factories? Steamboat? Cotton gin? Advanced farm equipment?

updated: 4/13/2025

Beyond the Classroom: Social Studies

Science

We are in our 3rd unit, Atoms & Chemical Reactions, that introduces students to Chemistry basics.

Topic 1 has concluded and we have ventured into Topic 2 - Chemical Reactions.

Reminder, within each unit there are Topics which are equatable to "chapters" in a unit. Atoms & Chemical Reactions has 2 Topics:

Atoms & the Periodic Table
Chemical Reactions

Essential Questions for each Topic:

How do atoms combine to form extended structures?
How do you know when a chemical reaction has occurred?

As we look ahead to the Spring season, take note that the Science Forward Test (state test) is scheduled for Thursday, April 3rd, 2025. This is also the date for the History Forward Test.

Beyond the Classroom: Science