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 teacher's guide for Addie on the Inside by James Howe contains discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.

A teachers guide for All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, including a list of vocabulary words, a set of questions to promote deeper comprehension, prompts for class discussion, and related resources post-read.

In this lesson, students will use compare/contrast and question/answer text structures to analyze how nonfiction text is structured, identify transitions that support text structures, and cite evidence to support the identification of text structures.

This Powerpoint introduces archetypes found in literature, tv shows, and movies.  Brief explanation for each of the selected archetypes and examples are presented.  There is an application assignment where students will find additional archetype examples and write a brief essay demonstrating understanding of archetype.

Students will explore different pieces of artwork to determine the artist's perspective, tone and/or mood, and draw several inferences.  Students will also explore altered images of the original artwork to explore changes of tone, mood, and perspective.  

A teachers guide for Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange, including chapter-specific questions for increased comprehension, questions for class discussion, and suggestions for further study.

In “Broken Chain,” Alfonso, a seventh grader, dislikes his appearance. In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

This teacher's guide for The Dark Side of Nowhere by Neal Shusterman contains a summary of the text, discussion questions, activities, and research assignments.

In this lesson, students explore figurative language and point of view in the novel "Jacob I Have Loved".

In this CCSS lesson, students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson, the students will get practice in reading and writing habits that they have been working with throughout the curriculum, in this case using poetry.

A guideline for teachers to compare the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce and discuss how their narration choices affect the piece and the reader.

This page contains a set of reading question for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

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.

Students will read through chapter 12 of The Giver where they find that the people in The Giver got rid of the ability to see color. First students will look at a variety of colors and determine what emotions the colors make them feel. Then they will each write about a color without giving the name of the color; the students in the class will need to guess the color. After that assignment, students will analyze how colors affect behaviors and emotions and critically determine why the people in the that world decided to make everyone see in black and white. Students will end the lesson answering the question "Why do you think we have color in our world?"

In this lesson, students will analyze the perspectives of a character—Scout—and the reader and the effect this creates for the reader. This lesson also features the last text to film comparison before the mid-unit assessment.

This assessment provides an opportunity for students to independently complete a text to film comparison.

In this lesson, students read lines 76–208 of Act 3, Scene 1, in which Puck comes upon the tradesmen rehearsing their version of Pyramus and Thisbe in the woods.