Eighth Grade

Comprehensive Health

• Apply knowledge and skills necessary to make personal decisions that promote healthy relationships and sexual and reproductive health
• Apply knowledge and skills related to health promotion, disease prevention, and health maintenance
• Utilize knowledge and skills to enhance mental, emotional, and social well-being
• Apply knowledge and skills to make health-enhancing decisions regarding the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs
• Apply knowledge and skills that promote healthy, violence-free relationships

Dance

• Demonstrate competence and confidence in performing a variety of dance styles and genres
• Understand that dance performance requires technical competency
• Participate in a dance production
• Demonstrate awareness of fitness, wellness, and the body's potential for movement
• Demonstrate and use the principles and practices of choreography in the creative process
• Demonstrate an understanding of form and structure to create dances
• Improvise and create movement based on an intent or meaning
• Demonstrate thinking skills such as describing, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and problem-solving through dance movement and verbal discussion
• Understand and appreciate a dance in terms of the culture in which it is performed
• Explore and perform dance styles from various cultures and times
• Discover connections to academic content areas, social activities, mass media, and careers
• Use criticism and analysis to reflect upon and understand new works, reconstructions, and masterpieces

Drama and Theatre Arts

• Employ drama and theatre skills, and articulate the aesthetics of a variety of characters and roles
• Use a variety of methods, new media, and technology to create theatrical works through the use of the creative process for performance, directing, design, construction, choreography, playwriting, scriptwriting, and dramaturgy
• Create drama and theatre by interpreting and appreciating theatrical works, culture, and experience through scenes and scenarios, improvisation, creating environments, purposeful movement, and research
• Express drama and theatre arts skills in a variety of performances, including plays, monologues, improvisation, purposeful movement, scenes, design, technical craftsmanship, media, ensemble works, and public speaking
• Demonstrate the evolution of rehearsal and product through performance and/or production teamwork while simultaneously validating both as essential to the theatre making process
• Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of theatre history, dramatic structure, dramatic literature, elements of style, genre, artistic theory, script analysis, and roles of theatre practitioners through research and application
• Make informed, critical evaluations of theatrical performance from an audience member and a participant point of view, and develop a framework for making informed theatrical choices
• Discern and demonstrate appropriate theatre etiquette and content for the audience, self, venue, technician, and performer

Mathematics

• Understand the structure and properties of our number system. At their most basic level numbers are abstract symbols that represent real-world quantities
• Understand that equivalence is a foundation of mathematics represented in numbers, shapes, measures, expressions, and equations
• Are fluent with basic numerical and symbolic facts and algorithms, and are able to select and use appropriate (mental math, paper and pencil, and technology) methods based on an understanding of their efficiency, precision, and transparency
• Use critical thinking to recognize problematic aspects of situations, create mathematical models, and present and defend solutions
• Solve problems and make decisions that depend on understanding, explaining, and quantifying the variability in data
• Apply transformation to numbers, shapes, functional representations, and data

Music

• Employ musical skills through a variety of means, including singing, playing instruments, and purposeful movement
• Demonstrate the processes of development of musical literature from rehearsal to performance, exhibiting appropriate interpersonal and expressive skills, both individually and within ensembles
• Demonstrate the expressive elements of music - including melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, texture, voicing/instrumentation, mood, tonality, and form - through voice, musical instruments, and/or the use of electronic tools
• Perform music with appropriate technique and level of expression at an appropriate level of difficulty in sight reading and prepared performance
• Create music by composing and/or arranging what is heard or envisioned, in notated or non-notated form, with or without the use of music technology, demonstrating originality and technical understanding
• Display instrumental or vocal improvisation skills by performing extemporaneously what is created in the mind
• Read and employ the language and vocabulary of music in discussing musical examples and writing music, including technology related to melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, voicing/orchestration, mood, tonality, expression, and form
• Demonstrate melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aural skills through identification, transcription, and vocalization or instrumental playback of aural musical examples
• Develop a framework for making informed personal musical choices, and utilize that framework in the making and defending of musical choices
• Make informed, critical evaluations of the effectiveness of musical works and performances on the basis of aesthetic qualities, technical excellence, musicality, or convincing expression of feelings and ideas related to cultural and ideological associations
• Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of aesthetics in music, appropriate to the particular features of given styles and genres, as it relates to the human experience in music
• Know the place of each of the participants in the performance environment and practice appropriate audience participation; recognize the place and importance of music in life

Physical Education

• Demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities
• Achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness
• Participate regularly in physical activity

Reading, Writing and Communicating

• Collaborate effectively as group members or leaders who listen actively and respectfully pose thoughtful questions, acknowledge the ideas of others, and contribute ideas to further the group's attainment of an objective
• Demonstrate skill in inferential and evaluative listening
• Seek feedback, self-assess, and reflect on personal learning while engaging with increasingly more difficult texts
• Engage in a wide range of nonfiction and real-life reading experiences to solve problems, judge the quality of ideas, or complete daily tasks
• Interpret how the structure of written English contributes to the pronunciation and meaning of complex vocabulary
• Effectively use content-specific language, style, tone, and text structure to compose or adapt writing for different audiences and purposes
• Write with a clear focus, coherent organization, sufficient elaboration, and detail
• Apply standard English conventions to effectively communicate with written language
• Exercise ethical conduct when writing, researching, and documenting sources
• Discriminate and justify a position using traditional lines of rhetorical argument and reasoning
• Gather information from a variety of sources; analyze and evaluate the quality and relevance of the source; and use it to answer complex questions

Science

• Observe, explain, and predict natural phenomena governed by Newton's laws of motion, acknowledging the limitations of their application to very small or very fast objects
• Apply an understanding that energy exists in various forms, and its transformation and conservation occur in processes that are predictable and measurable
• Apply an understanding of atomic and molecular structure to explain the properties of matter, and predict outcomes of chemical and nuclear reactions
• Explain and illustrate with examples how living systems interact with the biotic and abiotic environment
• Analyze how various organisms grow, develop, and differentiate during their lifetimes based on an interplay between genetics and their environment
• Evaluate evidence that Earth's geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere interact as a complex system
• Describe and interpret how Earth's geologic history and place in space are relevant to our understanding of the processes that have shaped our planet

Social Studies

• Develop an understanding of how people view, construct, and interpret history
• Analyze key historical periods and patterns of change over time within and across nations and cultures
• Examine places and regions and the connections among them
• Develop spatial understanding, perspectives, and personal connections to the world
• Understand the allocation of scarce resources in societies through analysis of individual choice, market interaction, and public policy
• Acquire the knowledge and economic reasoning skills to make sound financial decisions (PFL)
• Analyze and practice rights, roles, and responsibilities of citizens
• Analyze origins, structure, and functions of governments and their impacts on societies and citizens

Visual Arts

• Explain, demonstrate, and interpret a range of purposes of art and design, recognizing that the making and study of art and design can be approached from a variety of viewpoints, intelligences, and perspectives
• Analyze, interpret, and make meaning of art and design critically using oral and written discourse
• Recognize, articulate, and debate that the visual arts are a means for expression
• Transfer the value of visual arts to lifelong learning and the human experience
• Critique personal work and the work of others with informed criteria
• Recognize, articulate, and implement critical thinking in the visual arts by synthesizing, evaluating, and analyzing visual information
• Recognize, demonstrate, and debate the place of art and design in history and culture
• Recognize, interpret, and validate that the creative process builds on the development of ideas through a process of inquiry, discovery, and research
• Recognize, compare, and affirm that the making and study of art and design can be approached from a variety of viewpoints, intelligences, and perspectives
• Develop and build appropriate mastery in art-making skills using traditional and new technologies and an understanding of the characteristics and expressive features of art and design
• Create works of art that articulate more sophisticated ideas, feelings, emotions, and points of view about art and design through an expanded use of media and technologies
• Transfer the value of visual arts to lifelong learning and the human experience
• Explain, compare and justify that the visual arts are connected to other disciplines, the other art forms, social activities, mass media, and careers in art and non-art related arenas
• Identify, compare and justify that the visual arts are a way to acknowledge, exhibit and learn about the diversity of peoples, cultures and ideas