Core Knowledge Language Arts (6-8)
An underlying premise of CKLA is that knowledge builds on knowledge. Topics are chosen to give students in-depth understanding of the natural and social worlds. The 2023 middle school edition of CKLA is a significant update, which highlights the diverse peoples and cultural contributions shaping today’s world, allows students to see themselves represented in the curriculum, and fosters tolerance and appreciation of peers from different backgrounds. The curriculum is carefully designed to reinforce and deepen students’ knowledge over time, building on prerequisite knowledge acquired in earlier grades. “Core Connections” reviews that content for students as needed, especially students encountering the Core Knowledge sequence for the first time. CKLA pairs a knowledge-rich curriculum with a framework designed to cultivate character and social skills, ethics, civic responsibility, responsible decision making, and connections across diversity.
Rich, rigorous, diverse texts:
How Core Knowledge Language Arts designs for:
Deep knowledge building
The curriculum features a clear explanation of why each unit is included and educative materials to familiarize teachers with the topic before teaching. Teachers review basic background knowledge with students. Every lesson pays close attention to the language, vocabulary, and content students encounter in the texts they read and listen to. By staying on a topic for a sustained period, students receive multiple exposures to and experience with critical domain-specific and academic vocabulary embedded in different fields of knowledge. Repeatedly encountering such words in meaningful contexts throughout a unit exponentially increases the rate and depth with which students acquire new vocabulary and knowledge. Students study the morphology of words from core texts throughout each unit. Daily writing assignments are tightly connected to the topics students study in each unit, reinforcing their understanding. Careful instruction in sentence and paragraph formation and grammar is integrated into the unit-long writing projects, along with multiple opportunities for peer collaboration and teacher feedback. CKLA includes trade books for each year to supplement and enhance student learning on the unit topics.
Foundational skills and fluency for beginning and older readers
In sixth grade, a beginning-of-the-year assessment covers foundational skills, fluency, comprehension, morphology/vocabulary, and grammar. The lessons regularly provide excellent guidance to teachers on how best to support students with reading gaps, especially with multisyllabic words, word recognition, and persistent decoding challenges. CKLA’s research-based approach aims to improve students’ fluency with increasingly complex texts. Reading texts aloud is a staple in lessons: As the teacher reads aloud, students are always directed to follow along in the text. This method offers students universal access to grade-level text and daily opportunities to improve their reading fluency. The Decoding and Encoding Remediation Supplement provides additional instruction and support for students with code knowledge and fluency gaps. Though this resource is designed for sixth grade, it can easily be used in seventh and eighth grades as well.
Equitable access to challenging texts
The whole class works together during daily lessons to tackle the grade-level core text. Texts are read in small chunks where students attend to literal, inferential, and evaluative questions to unpack the meaning of vocabulary, complex syntax, and literary devices. Small group and partner work offers numerous opportunities to engage in rich, structured, text-based conversations. Grade-level read-alouds ensure students fully grasp the content. A unit assessment is administered to review students’ grasp of the reading, writing, grammar, and comprehension skills taught in each unit. “Pause points” are then built into the pacing, during which students can cement or enhance their learning, ensuring every student has the practice and experiences needed to succeed in their work with grade-level materials.
Topics of study
Learning and exhibiting deep knowledge
Access Core Knowledge Language Arts
CKLA 6-8 was developed by the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, which makes the curriculum openly available on its website. Some student books written by authors outside of the Core Knowledge Foundation are copyrighted and therefore not available for free download. Print copies of these student books, as well as print copies of all CKLA 6-8 instructional materials, are available at the Core Knowledge Bookstore. An digital, interactive version of CKLA 6-8 is available for purchase from Kiddom.