08th Grade English

With the first edition of his book, Don Killgallon changed the way thousands of high school English teachers and their students look at language, literature, and writing by focusing on the sentence. In this revised edition, Killgallon presents the same proven methodology but offers all-new writing exercises designed specifically for the middle school student.

Unlike traditional grammar books that emphasize the parsing of sentences, this worktext asks students to imitate the sentence styles of professional writers, making the sentence composition process an enjoyable and challenging one. Killgallon teaches subliminally, nontechnically--the ways real writers compose their sentences, the ways students subsequently intuit within their own writing.

Designed to produce sentence maturity and variety, the worktext offers extensive practice in four sentence-manipulating techniques: sentence unscrambling, sentence imitating, sentence combining, and sentence expanding. All of the activities are based on model sentences written by widely respected authors. They are designed to teach students structures they should but seldom use. The rationale is that imitation and practice are as valuable in gaining competence and confidence in written language production as they are in oral language production.

Since the practices have proven successful for the great majority of students who have used them in all kinds of schools, it's demonstrably true that Sentence Composing can work anywhere--in any school, with any student.

4 Book Studies (listed in the order they appear):
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich
Eric Liddell by Catherine Swift
God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew

Integrated language arts lessons including: grammar, spelling, higher order thinking, and study skills.

Spelling lists each week from the most Commonly Misspelled Words.

Vocabulary Building exercises bring meaning to vocabulary in context making it useful in everyday language. Continued study of suffixes, prefixes, and root words prepares students for college testing.

PLUS, a five week Writing Unit!

Teacher friendly, with little or no preparation needed!

Reviews Activities follow most lessons providing additional skill practice.

Assessments help teachers to evaluate student's progress.

Primarily based on dictation, your student will learn all the components of language arts in one easy to use book.

Encouraging a love for classical literature, through dictation students learn punctuation, capitalization, parts of speech, grammar, creative writing, and more.

Each week ten words from the most Commonly Misspelled Word List are used for testing. The Vocabulary Building exercises bring meaning to vocabulary in context making it useful in everyday language. A five week Writing Unit prepares students for high school writing and research as well as continued study in prefixes, suffixes, and roots words. Four Book Studies are designed to expand understanding through various activities involving reading and writing skills. Reviews after most lessons and Assessments are provided for teachers' use for student evaluation.