8th Grade

 

One of the highlights of eighth grade is in the ELA curriculum. The first mission is about bullying. Cliques tend to form in eighth grade, so the students read a book called “Sticks and Stones.” Then, in groups, they write letters to the chancellor, the school administration, parents, and other students to suggest what they should do about bullying. There is also a mission built around dystopian fiction in which students read young adult novels based around this topic and engage in the “Writer Games,” a competition loosely based on the “Hunger Games.”

In the 8th grade, Codeworlds is focused on the theme of functions. Specifically, students learn how to model real-life situations by writing and solving equations. Trimester 1 finds students living in the identity of a movie producer. They learn about walking and transportation rates in order to study the structures of linear relationships. Ideas like slope and y-intercept percolate to the surface, and prove critical to solving problems in the mission. By the end of the mission, students present the budget and schedule of a 10-day movie production, constrained by​ traffic, catering, union rules, and a host of other obstacles. The second trimester finds students in the fantasy world of Troika. Here, they awake in an abandoned hospital in a post-apocalyptic and war torn city. They must solve algebraic equations to escape the hospital and continue the mission. From here, the study of geometry helps the hero solve problems, including the study of irrational numbers and the Pythagorean Theorem. Transformative geometry finishes the trimester as the students move radiation vacuum drones around the city with translations, reflections and rotations. The third trimester marks a return to modern day, where students become executives in charge of convincing the NBA and a group of investors that a basketball team should move to their city. From the study of intersecting lines to help them create logos, to the use of equations to study the advanced metrics of talent evaluation, to the 3-D geometry of stadium design, students must put it all together and go for the pros!