Information Skills — Grade 8

A road map to reading

Students struggle with informational texts and websites. Understanding the structure of these texts is essential to efficient information gathering. The "Road Map" is a pre-reading strategy. Like the road map in your atlas, this mapping activity will help students visualize the layout of the text before they start reading so they will have an idea of where they are going (or where to find the information they are looking for) when they start reading. This lesson will also address active-reading strategies students can use to find information for research in print and electronic sources.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts, Information Skills, and Social Studies)

By Elizabeth Hubbe and Melissa Thibault.

Literature biography project

For this project, students will learn to develop the various processes used in researching and writing a biographical research paper, including brainstorming, note taking, outlining, creating a bibliography, and writing the final draft. This project is designed to act as an independent study geared toward AG or Level 3 and Level 4 students, but each step in the research process can also be taught directly to students in the classroom.

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 English Language Arts and Information Skills)

By Sandra Dail.

Back to the future!

In this lesson plan, students research the history of an important invention and present what they've learned through an annotated timeline, historical fiction journal accounts, and VoiceThread technology.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 Information Skills)

By Diane Ruby.

Resources on the web

Nearsightedness

This lesson gives students the opportunity to examine the nature of scientific research in the context of research pertaining to myopia, or nearsightedness. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 6–8 Information Skills)

Provided by: American Association for the Advancement of Science