This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 8th Grade ELA. 

This lesson, focused on profile writing and its unique characteristics, considers the profiles developed in the film The Soul of a Man. The film's profiles of three blues musicians provide the basis for complementary activities that ask students to consider the meaning of a man's soul and how a person's life exposes the contents of that soul.

Students will explore how an artist emphasized the narrative in a work of art that depicts a single moment from the story. They then write a newspaper article, using visual clues in the painting to imagine how the narrative depicted many have unfolded.

In this lesson, students study issues related to independence and notions of manliness in Ernest Hemingway’s “Three Shots” as they conduct in-depth literary character analysis, consider the significance of environment to growing up and investigate Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning, unique prose style. In addition, they will have the opportunity to write and revise a short story based on their own childhood experiences and together create a short story collection.

This lesson allows students to see and experience how a story can drastically change when told from the perspective of a character whose voice was not heard in the story's original form. After reading and discussing a New York Times review of the latest Tarzan film, students will select a favorite children's story and rewrite it from another character's point of view, focusing on the character's view of the elements of the plot, other characters, and himself or herself.

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In this three week unit on the novel The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, students examine and discuss the characteristics of a novel, compare and contrast the novel to folk tales and short stories, write chapter summaries and essays, and conduct Internet research to prepare slideshow presentations on related topics including those reflecting cultural differences of the novel's characters and those issues involving the economic principle of supply and demand.

In this lesson, students identify and analyze folktales. They learn the characteristics of folktales and use them to evaluate existing tales and to create original tales of their own. Students apply the writing process to strengthen writing skills and to develop creativity.