In middle school, Language Arts tends to be repetitive in order to help a student gradually improve his or her skills. The basic subject matter that a middle school student must know before beginning high school is as follows.
Reading: A student needs to be able to read silently and with fluency, skim a story for information, and read independently. They must have critical reading skills, as well as literal, inferential, and evaluative reading skills.
Literature: Students must be familiar with numerous types of literature such as mythology, poetry (lyric, narrative, and dramatic), novels, short stories, plays, myths, legends, and ballads, types of poetry, biography, autobiography, and nonfiction. They must also be able to understand literary terms. Students should also be able to plan and produce dramatizations. Students should also have read numerous biographies of great Americans and American poets and storytellers.
Communication: Students must have good listening skills and nonverbal communication. They should participate in speech and debate activities.
Research: Students should learn how to research to find information and to write essays and papers. They need to extend their dictionary skills, build their vocabulary to an advanced level. They should be able to use atlases, directories, encyclopedias, periodicals, on-line information services, CD-ROMs, and other electronic reference material. They should understand the organization of a book and build a bibliography. They should also understand library organization.
Spelling: Students should be able to spell and correct incorrect spelling up to a middle school level. A good source for spelling words is 100+ words every middle school student should know.
Grammar: A middle school student should know numerous grammar topics before starting high school. They should learn homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, using roots, prefixes, and suffixes, concepts of noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, sentence structure, and diagramming sentences. Other parts of speech they should know are person, number, gender of nouns and pronouns, punctuation of conversation, clauses and phrases, and compound sentences. Figures of speech such as infinitive, participle, gerund, and predicate nominative, predicate adjective, direct and indirect object, kinds of sentences and their parts, and functions of sentence elements are also important.
Writing: Students should be able to write different types of essays such as narration, description, exposition, persuasion and to use inductive and deductive reasoning. They must be able to write outlines, letters, factual matter (reports, newspaper articles), verse (limericks, ballads), and creative prose (diary, stories). They must be able to write simple business letters, and have report-writing skills. They should be able to take notes to use for study and be able to write an outline. Legible cursive handwriting is also important.
Related Articles:
Second Grade Homeschool Basics
Fourth Grade Homeschool Basics