Students work collaboratively to research and record information about different spinoffs of space exploration. Using the information they find, students then write a script to be produced into a podcast or vodcast.

This 8th grade unit highlights main events of the Civil Rights Movement and navigates to the life of Jackie Robinson and watching the movie 42.

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 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.

In this activity, students will work in collaborative groups to create 9M x 9M models of plant and animal cells. Class population can be split into 2 or 4 groups, with half the students constructing animal cells and the other half constructing plant cells. Students must organize and assign duties, provide materials for this activity, and write a written report. They will also give "Cell Tours" to other students and/or classroom guests.

This lesson explores the language of electronic messages and how it affects other writing. Furthermore, it explores the freedom and creativity for using Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examines the importance of a more formal style of writing based on audience.

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 lesson and resource engages students in a metacognition exercise about critical thinking and also practice research and informational writing skills using a collection of critical thinking quotes.

Working in small groups, students will work produce sections of an historical newspaper or journal for publication in democratic Athens. Using the resources of this Web site (as well as books and other resources listed in the Research Links & Resources Page) pick an approximate date and research stories for your newspaper. This section has been tailored for a newspaper about Athens during the time of Pericles, because of the greater amount of information available for that period. However, with some adaptation and additional research it would be possible to compile newspapers for early or later periods.

In this lesson, students use primary source documents to research Lincoln's life. Students will then write a journal entry as Abraham Lincoln.

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.

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.

Students will write their own poems and publish them using Book Creator. Students will first choose a book about a topic they have studied in other classes (math, science, social studies, encore) and use this book to gather key events and ideas to write their poem.  

In this lesson the students will be using a variety of skills to analyze fiction and expository texts. This combines the reading of detective fiction with written expository analysis in the form of a Detective’s Handbook. Each student reads a detective mystery, and the class watches and analyzes Murder She Purred to establish a collective example.

Students will explore the world of Medieval Europe. They will learn the way the people lived and how Phragmites was part of this world. Students will then be assigned a social class role in the system of feudalism and research information about their character's privileges and disadvantages. Students will experience the feudal system through activities and presentations to relay what they learned to their class. Students may choose a variety of creative outlets to express their character's life in their own creative way with a group or separately.

Suggestions on how to guide students through the writing process when writing editorials "” from brainstorming a topic to publishing their work "” and all the steps in between.

This lesson will provide eighth grade students with an inquiry-based research project based on C.S. Lewis' classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Students will determine the author's purpose in writing this story. This will be accomplished by researching material using the Alabama Virtual Library and Gale Resources.

This lesson is for 2, 50 minute, class periods. Students will begin research on a country of their choice and begin to explore how that country demonstrates patriotism and analyze the lyrics of that country's national anthem. Students will work to determine the meaning of the lyrics and think about why countries have a national anthem. By analyzing the lyrics of the coutry's anthem, the student will have to infer how that leads to patriotism in that given country. This lesson was developed by Megon Mancini as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.