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.

Students will read a text and then they will demonstrate their new vocabulary knowledge through appropriate use of the words in context and with accompanying illustrations. They will create of an ABC book through individual and small-group activities. Students will take an active role in their learning by identifying the content area vocabulary they want to research. This lesson can be implemented in any content classroom.

Students participate in a fishbowl discussion about various legal situations related to the "age of responsibility" and contribute their ideas and arguments on the matter to a Learning Network Student Opinion blog post. This resource from the New York Times discusses what standard(s) society should use to determine when a youth should be treated as an adult.

There is no one poem that represents the experience of African Americans in the United States, yet the history of racism in this country is seared deeply into the lives of many African Americans. “The Weakness” by Toi Derricotte recounts an experience with racism through the eyes of a young, light-skinned African American girl going shopping with her grandmother in a department store in 1945. The poems in The African American Experience offer a number of perspectives from African American poets that add a rich complexity to students’ perceptions of African American lives.

Students will research the life of an African American poet using print and online resources. Afterwards, students present their findings by writing a research paper and creating a PowerPoint presentation.

Students will research and discuss a sensitive or controversial issue and attempt to make a decision based on group findings.

Students learn about methane hydrate ice worms and hydrate shrimp, including how they obtain their food and interact with other species in deep sea ecosystems. Students will work in collaborative groups to research these organisms to develop hypotheses about the relationship between methane hydrates, ice worms, and hydrate shrimp and present their hypotheses to the class. In an extension activity, students will construct models of methane hydrate molecules.

This lesson concentrates on Anne Frank as a writer. After a look at Anne Frank the adolescent, and a consideration of how the experiences of growing up shaped her composition of the Diary, students explore some of the writing techniques Anne invented for herself and practice those techniques with material drawn from their own lives.

In this video, students work in small groups to determine what it takes to make the conclusions of their essays stronger. The students read sample conclusions and rank them from weakest to strongest. The use of arguments and textual evidence in these samples allow students to revise their own essay conclusions modeled by the strongest conclusion.

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 work in groups to read and discuss a book, keeping track of their feelings and opinions about the book, as well as facts and quotations, as they read. Students then decide which parts of their review they wish to annotate, with each student in the group responsible for one topic. Each student writes about his or her topic, including bibliographic information.

This language arts lesson offers a hands-on opportunity for students to understand characterization in literature and to connect historical and contemporary culture. Through research and study of Shakespearean England, student pairs get to know about the life of a character in the book Shakespeare Stealer. Students collect props and clues to create a “life box” and a poem about their character. Using props adds a visual and physical dimension to their learning while using words engages mental facilities, making this a whole brain activity. Students must communicate their clues and interpret others clues to reveal character’s identities.

In this lesson, students will read letters written during the Civil War. Referring to their knowledge about the Civil War, they’ll develop a clear understanding of the message of the letter. They will edit the letters for mechanics and create a dramatic reading based on their letter. Then students will create their own Civil War dramas, using a fictional letter they create.

Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) is a technique that teaches students to work cooperatively on a reading assignment to promote better comprehension. CSR learning logs are used to help students keep track of learning during the collaboration process. Students think about what they are reading and write down questions/reflections about their learning. The completed logs then provide a guide for follow-up activities and evaluation methods.

Students will create a travel brochure for either their home town or a city they would love to visit or move to as soon as possible. This activity will help them learn to research and document information in appropriate spaces.

The following unit incorporates multimedia and classroom activities to encourage students to explore and interact with poetry by first writing letters to important historical poets as practice for writing letters to the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors, a group that represents poetry in America at its best.

Students begin by brainstorming a list of items that combine different ways of expressing ideas—such as a poster or DVD. After the lists are shared, list items are identified as texts (audio texts, video texts, etc.) Students then create an inventory of significant texts that they have engaged with over a specified period of time, and discuss why it is important to interact with a variety of different types of texts. With this start, they create a working definition of literacy that they refine and explore as they continue their investigation of the texts that they interact with at home, at school, and in other settings.

In this lesson, students brainstorm texts that they have read recently and map their choices using a Graphic Map to rate and make notes about them. Students then look for patterns connecting the texts that they enjoyed the most and those they enjoyed the least. Once they've analyzed their past readings, students complete a reading plan by first listing categories of books they want to read. They then use booklists, book reviews, and other resources to create a wish list of books they hope to read in the future.

In this introductory lesson, students engage in a hands-on, collaborative investigation of the definition of reading by participating in small group brainstorming sessions and an analysis of a variety of texts and the strategies they need to read them. Students also create individual Reader’s Profiles with an online tool modeled on social networking sites. Sharing these profiles and reflecting on their own learning, students ultimately develop a working definition of reading which they refine during the year.