English Language Arts — Grade 8

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Expository escapade-Detective's handbook

In this lesson, students combine reading the detective fiction genre with expository writing. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Exploring literacy in cyberspace

This ReadWriteThink lesson invites students to transfer the analytical skills that they commonly use when reading traditional print texts, along with some other strategies, to navigate and read online texts. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Exploring Free Speech and Persuasion with '"Nothing but the Truth"

After reading the novel Nothing But The Truth, students discuss the protagonist Phillip and his right to free speech as well as their own rights. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Every punctuation mark matters: A mini-lesson on semicolons

Students first explore Dr. Martin Luther King's use of semicolons and their rhetorical significance, then apply the lesson to their own writing by searching for ways to follow Dr. King's model and use the punctuation mark in their own writing. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Dynamic duo text talks: Examining the content of Internet sites

This introductory lesson from ReadWriteThink exposes students to a variety of online texts about Anne Frank and the Holocaust prior to more extensive study of these topics. Students are encouraged to cooperatively examine Internet sites as a primary source... (Learn more)

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

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Critical media literacy: Commercial advertising

Conducting an evaluation of television and magazine advertisements, students critique the effect mass media has on American culture. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 7–8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Cooking up descriptive language: Designing restaurant menus

In this lesson students explore the genre of menus by analyzing existing menus from local restaurants and creating their own original menus. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Comic makeovers: Examining race, class, ethnicity, and gender in the media

In this ReadWriteThink lesson, students explore representations of race, class, ethnicity, and gender by analyzing comics over a two-week period and then re-envisioning them with a “comic character makeover.” (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8–9 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Civil War Music

In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from ARTSEDGE, students use the Internet as a resource to compare and contrast Civil War songs of the North and the South. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 5 and 8 English Language Arts, Music Education, and Social Studies)

Provided by: The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Children of war

Explores the realities and effects of war on children by examining diaries, journals, and letters written by children during times of war. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Child labor: Giving voice to the industrial revolution through monologues

Students gather information using selected websites and explore issues related to child labor, particularly as it occurred in England and the United States during the Industrial Revolution. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Book report alternative: Creating a childhood for a character

In this lesson, students examine the character traits of an adult character in a book they have read, create a childhood for the character, and describe that childhood in the form of a short story, journal entry, or time capsule letter. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Battling for liberty: Tecumseh's and Patrick Henry's language of resistance

This lesson extends the study of Patrick Henry's “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech to demonstrate the ways Native Americans also resisted oppression through rhetoric and action. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Avalanche, Aztek, or Bravada? A connotation mini-lesson

In this lesson that introduces connotation in literature, students examine familiar car names (such as Avalanche, Aztek, Bravada, Suburban or Vue) for underlying meaning. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Authentic persuasive writing to promote summer reading

Invites students to create brochures and flyers that suggest books and genres to explore during the summer months. (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8–9 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

American prehistory: 8000 years of forest management

Students study the evidence of 8000 years of Native American prehistoric land use practices. By analyzing images of Native American material culture, students will understand how artifacts and architecture reveal environmental attitudes of the culture. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: Forest History Society