CURRICULUM RATIONALE: GRADE 8
8
th
Grade English Composition/Honors English 8 Rationale
Monster
by Walter Dean Myers (1999)
The English Department has carefully evaluated Monster as a whole and deemed it worthy for the 8th grade English
curriculum.
I. PLOT SUMMARY
Steve Harmon is a sixteen year old boy on trial. The reader learns about Steve through his journal entries and the
movie script he writes during the trial, challenging the reader to examine his involvement in the crime. The student
will identify themes of poverty, racism, inequality, survival, and hope.
II. RATIONALE AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Monster will be read as a whole-class text and will be the anchoring text in a unit on identity. The questions raised in
Monster will be brought up again during the moral courage unit later in the year when the class reads The Book
Thief. Students will interact with the text by dramatizing selections and reflecting via personal response on the guilt of
Steve Harmon and what it may mean to their lives. In-class discussions will revolve around personal responsibility,
guilt by association, and the understanding that people can be defined by the company that they keep. The
ambiguous ending allows the class to have a powerful discussion about whether or not he did what the prosecutors
said he did, and if that merited being charged with murder. Students will explore through journals whether or not
things would have been different if at any point Steve had made a different choice or had vocalized his moral
objections to plot to rob the store. The unit project will be a legal, persuasive speech written and presented by
students as if in a court setting. This will allow students to develop their public speaking and persuasive writing skills.
III. COMMON CORE STANDARDS
Reading Standards for Literature
Key Ideas and Details Grade 8
1. Read closely to determine what the tex t says
explicitly and to make logical inferences from it;
cite specific textual evidence when writi ng or
speaking to support conclusions drawn f rom the
text.
1. Cite the textual evidence that most st rongly supports an analysis of what the text sa ys
explicitly as well as inferences drawn f rom the text.
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a tex t
and analyze their development; summarize the
key supporting details and ideas.
2. Determine a theme or central idea o f a text and analyze its development over the co urse
of the text, including its relationship to th e characters, setting, and plot; provide a n
objective summary of the text.
3. Analyze how and why individuals, event s, and
ideas develop and interact over the course o f a
text.
3. Analyze how particular lines of dialo gue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action,
reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
Craft and Structure Grade 8
4. Interpret words and phrases as they a re
used in a text, including determining tech nical,
connotative, and figurative meanings, and
analyze how specific word choices shape
meaning or tone.
4. Determine the meaning of words and ph rases as they are used in a text, including
fig
urative and connotative meanings; a nalyze the impact of specific word cho ices on meaning
and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
