This resource accompanies our Rethink 8th Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 8th grade ELA content.

This lesson and resource helps students strengthen their persuasive writing by identifying and responding to counterarguments.

Students become more aware of the language and techniques used in print advertising, as well as the impact of advertising on their daily lives. The unit will focus on three key media literacy concepts: construction of reality, representation, and audience. Students will learn to analyze the format and structure of advertisements, differentiate between information and selling, and learn about target audiences.

Students become more aware of the media"™s role in determining what, and who, are perceived as being cool. Through class discussion and activities, students explore the differences between superficial and real "coolness," how marketers use cool to sell products, and how their own attitudes and perceptions are affected by media messages that reinforce specific messages about what coolness is.

Students use Shakespeare's Secret, a featured title on the Teachers' Choices Booklist (International Reading Association, 2006), as a springboard to exploration of the controversy regarding the authorship Shakespeare's works. The novel makes liberal use of the historical details surrounding William Shakespeare's life, and exposes students to the possibility raised by some theorists that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the works that have long been attributed to the Bard. Students explore the historical references in the novel and generate questions for further research. As they research these questions on suggested websites, they organize their findings with the help of the ReadWriteThink Notetaker. Then they work in small groups to create and present short dramatic skits that creatively connect the novel with the historical facts.

Students examine books, selected from the American Library Association Challenged/Banned Books list, and write persuasive pieces expressing their views about what should be done with the books at their school.

Students share opinions about the tone and content of two commercials presented during the Super Bowl.They then work with a partner to critique a commercial from a past Super Bowl, and then assess the commercials that run during a half-hour television show.

This lesson aligns with the 7th grade Social Studies curriculum and works best when integrated into an interdisciplinary unit, such as Reliving the Middle Ages Across Lliterary Genres. Interdisciplinary Units are effective when teachers from two different content areas collaborate to plan lessons, assessments, activities and projects that support their content skills and standards. The content being taught in one course supports the content in another and students approach difficult, content-specific texts with more familiarity and gain better comprehension.  Students read two nonfiction articles about the Middle Ages, which lasted from about A.D. 500 to A.D. 1500. Both texts examine one of the most significant events of this time period-- the spread of the bubonic plague, or the Black Death. Each text is organized into cause-and-effect pattern of organization. One outlines HOW the disease spread (causes) and the other explains how it affected Europe (effects). Students analyze two texts by different authors writing about the same topic, the Black Plague, and compare/contrast how each author shapes their presentations of key information by emphasizing different evidence. 

Students read two descriptions of Earth's interior structure and summarize similarities and differences between the two and answer a series on analysis questions.

Students look at the ways in which consumer frenzy develops around a particular product. They begin by brainstorming the characteristics that make a toy a "must-have" possession; and discuss and reflect on the "Tickle Me Elmo" phenomenon as an example of this sort of marketing occurrence. Students discuss the ethical issues associated with consumerism, and how they respond to "gotta have it" pressures from peers and the media. Students will demonstrate and understanding of the ways in which marketers use hype to sell products, an awareness of how consumers respond to marketing hype, and an awareness of the elements that make a product desirable.

In this lesson, students will learn how to use primary sources, and work in groups to create murals about the events and trends of a decade of the twentieth century. Students will focus their research on a specific category relating to the culture of that decade, and then depict their findings in their murals.

Worksheets and activities with answer keys to help students of differing levels identify and/or determine the difference between fact and opinion in selected passages.

This lesson provides hands-on differentiated instruction by guiding students to search for the literal definitions of figurative language using the Internet. It also guides students in understanding figurative meanings through the use of context clues and making inferences.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the end of unit assessment prompt. From the assessment prompt they then begin to transition from the idea of how refugees flee and find a new home to a focus on the more psychological and emotional aspects of being turned “inside out.”

In this lesson, students continue to work with Shirley Chisholm’s speech “Equal Rights for Women.” Having thought about the gist of the whole speech in Lesson 3, they now reread and annotate each section of the text for the gist.

In this lesson, students engage in a jigsaw on the evidence-based claims in Chisholm’s speech.

In this lesson, students begin the writing process for the End of Unit 2 Assessment, an argument essay on To Kill a Mockingbird.

In this lesson, students engage in a jigsaw on the evidence-based claims in Schama’s article.