Hi there! I’m Ms. Sharkey, 8th grade English Language Arts teacher and Middle School Lead.

A little about me: I bring to my teaching practice at Merryhill Midtown a lifelong love of art and literature. I hold an undergraduate degree in Humanities and a MA in Art History with an emphasis in Modern/Contemporary Art from  CSU Chico. I completed my teaching credential at Mills College in Oakland. I deeply love reading and teaching “young adult” literature and I am excited to see our students fall in love with the novels, essays, and short stories we will read together this year. We will do a great deal of reading, writing, and literacy skill-building in our English Language Arts course, and students should be prepared to challenge and enjoy themselves!

Course Overview:

The eighth grade English Language Arts course provides a balance of developing reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. A core focus in these years is one of developing the use of language for academic purposes. Students will be supported in this development through challenges to plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish varied and  specific types of writing.  These writing types include argumentative essays, informative/explanatory texts, narratives, and multi-media presentations.  Students are required to draw upon and write about evidence from literary and informational texts.

In addition to developing writing skills, this course strongly emphasizes the importance of developing and using academic language in the context of discussion. Each unit will include a portion devoted to activities where students will be expected to develop and show the ability to engage professionally and appropriately in academic discussions focused on literary and nonfiction text analysis.

The reading aspect of this course teaches essential comprehension skills and literary analysis strategies. Students read closely and cite evidence from grade-level fiction and nonfiction to support an analysis of what the materials say. Students apply skills they learned in earlier grades to make sense of longer, more challenging books and articles.

It is the aim of this course to ensure that students develop a range of broadly useful oral communication and interpersonal skills.  They must learn to work together, express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, literary, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, and synthesize it through their own literacy practices in order to communicate understanding and growth.