Eigth Grade Scope and Sequence

Grade 8 Curriculum Guide

Social Studies

* Our African, Asian, and European backgrounds
* Exploration and discovery
* Growth and development of the United States
- Colonial life
- Struggle for independence
- U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights
- Westward movement in America
- American Civil War
- Reconstruction
- U. S. as a world power
* Meaning of democracy
* Our American culture
* U. S. political system
* U. S. economic system
* U. S. government
* U. S. geography
* Advanced map and globe skills

Science

* Scientific method
* Scientific nomenclature
* Scientific measurement
* Ecology and environment
* Conservation
* Composition of the earth
* Ocean, atmosphere
* Weather
* Water and its uses
* Weathering and erosion
* Recycling of resources
* Magnetism and electricity
* Heat and light
* Forces in liquids and gases
* Wave, mechanical, electrical, and nuclear energy
* The earth's movement
* Newton's three laws of motion
* Machines
* The atom
* Periodic table of elements
* Compounds and mixtures
* Chemical changes
* Astronomy
* The universe and Milky Way
* Space and space travel

Language Arts

* Independent reading
* Literal, inferential, and evaluative reading skills
* Literary terms
* Novel, short story, narrative poetry
* Nonfiction
* Biographies of great Americans
* American poets and storytellers
* Creative dramatics
* Listening and speech activities
* Advanced dictionary work
* Extended vocabulary
* Figures of speech
* Spelling
* Infinitive, participle, gerund, predicate nominative, predicate adjective, direct and indirect object
* Kinds of sentences and their parts
* Functions of sentence elements
* Writing simple business letters
* Report-writing skills
* Improving skills in using basic reference sources
* Inductive and deductive reasoning

Health and Safety

* Grooming
* Functions of the body
* The body's utilization of food
* Types and functions of foods
* Environmental hazards
* Community sanitation and health
* Health care services
* Sexually transmitted diseases
* Accident prevention, safety, and first aid
* Mental hygiene
* Substance abuse

Mathematics

* Maintaining skills in fundamental operations
* Factoring and products
* Sets and simple sentences
* Numeration systems
* Using fractions and decimals
* Ratio, proportion, and percent
* Equalities and inequalities
* Simple formulas and equations
* Graphing an equation
* Powers and roots of rational numbers
* Polynomials
* Metric and non-metric geometry
* Pythagorean Theorem
* Scale drawing
* Right-triangle trigonometry
* Customary and metric measurement
* Permutations
* Probability statistics
* Statistical terms
* Mathematics of insurance, banking, and taxes