English Language Arts — Grade 8

Uncovering assumptions through critical writing

Students will learn to identify assumptions and propaganda techniques in advertisements. They will then use these techniques to create their own advertisement for a product and write a business letter persuading a company to produce their product.

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

By Rennie Lee.

Mountain dialect: Reading between the spoken lines

This lesson plan uses Chapter 13 of Our Southern Highlanders as a jumping-off point to help students achieve social studies and English language arts objectives while developing an appreciation of the uniqueness of regional speech patterns, the complexities of ethnographic encounter, and the need to interrogate primary sources carefully to identify potential biases and misinformation in them. Historical content includes American slavery, the turn-of-the-century, and the Great Depression.

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

By Kathryn Walbert.

Maya Angelou: Study and response to "Still I Rise"

Students read biographical information on Maya Angelou and her poem, "Still I Rise." Students identify support and elaboration in poem, then respond by either writing a letter to the author or his/her own poem in response.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Barbara Groome and Jo Peterson Gibbs.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” speech

Students will display their understanding of the symbolism and references that Dr. King used to enrich his famous speech on August 28, 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by constructing a “jackdaw,” a collection of documents and objects.

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

By Charlotte Lammers.

The life and works of Edgar Allan Poe

Students will evaluate a sampling of literary selections by Edgar Allan Poe and assess the influence of Poe's life on his works.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Peggy Stanley.

Jim Crow and segregation

This is an integrated lesson plan that incorporates both eighth grade language arts and history. Using Internet research, literary analysis, and persuasive technique, students will practice reading and writing skills while analyzing the impact of Jim Crow Segregation on African Americans living in North Carolina and elsewhere.

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

By Burnetta Barton.

Interpreting a short story

Students will study the literary genre of the short story and examine how, through writing, an author can comment directly/indirectly on our society as a whole. Hopefully, the students will develop an awareness of the problems/concerns facing our society and an appreciation of how a skilled writer can mirror society's ills and sometimes offer solutions for the problems that plague us.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Regina Johnson.

How do I look to you?

In this lesson, students will evaluate public service posters and a grooming pamphlet to determine if and how propaganda was used to improve the health of children, and define acceptable appearances for young women in the 1930s.

Format: lesson plan (grade 5–8 English Language Arts)

By Loretta Wilson.

Differences across the curriculum: Part 2

This set of lessons can be used with "Differences across the curriculum: Part 1" as an integrated approach to exploring diversity with eighth graders. The unit will revolve around the use of the drama version of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Students will learn how diversity creates bias, which leads to conflict, where students confront their bias and practice tolerance. These parts reflect the four core curricula in an interwoven approach to teaching students to confront their biases, learn tolerance, and infer the impact of these on today's society. This activity, Part 2, is meant to augment the pre-reading activities completed in Part 1 in a Social Studies class.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Lynn Carter.

Determining the author's purpose: Analyzing a recruitment video

In CareerStart lessons: Grade eight, page 1.10

In this lesson plan, students analyze a video about ROTC to determine why the video was created.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Andrea Fedon, Gail Frank, and Cindy Neininger.

Walk Two Moons: An integrated unit

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is a bittersweet story of a teenager who desperately wants to be reunited with her mother. This unit is an integrated study combining setting, theme, point of view, character, and plot with geography and geometry.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Janet Fore.

Resources on the web

You know the movie is coming—Now what?

After exploring cinematic terms, students read a literary work with director's eyes and then try to predict what elements would be present in the film version of the book. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Why Do We Remember Revere? Paul Revere's Ride in History and Literature

Contains four activities for students to examine how the historical Paul Revere's ride differs from the account in Longfellow's poem, then reflect on why this event is so significant in American cultural history. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: National Endowment for the Humanities

Seeing integration from different viewpoints

This lesson from ReadWriteThink uses The Story of Ruby Bridges, by Robert Coles, as a basis for a Directed Reading-Thinking Activity. A prereading strategy captures students' interest using a question and a during-reading strategy focuses their... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

Provided by: IRA/NCTE

Postmodern picture books in the middle school

Students learn to analyze plot and critique the author's intent in this lesson that focuses on Black and White by David Macaulay, a picture book that presents four story lines. Students will also explore multi-literacies and... (Learn more)

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

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Points of view in the news

Students will read articles from National Geographic News and answer questions describing each article's source, purpose, and viewpoint. (Learn more)

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

Provided by: National Geographic

The poet's voice: Langston Hughes and you

Some poets achieve popular acclaim only when they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for... (Learn more)

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

Provided by: EDSITEment

Poems that tell a story: Narrative and persona in the poetry of Robert Frost

In this lesson from EDSITEment, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this lesson encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather... (Learn more)

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

Provided by: EDSITEment

Media Awareness, Lesson 3

In this final lesson of the Media curriculum unit from ARTSEDGE, students create a drawing to be used as an advertisement for their toy. They select the background/foreground space as well as possible symbols for their advertisement, with consideration... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 5–8 Visual Arts Education and English Language Arts)

Provided by: ArtsEdge

Media Awareness, Lesson 1

In this ARTSEDGE lesson, students discuss why they like the particular toy they have chosen to bring to class. They brainstorm, making a list of different categories of toys, and then discuss reasons for valuing particular toys. They begin to explore the... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 5–8 Visual Arts Education and English Language Arts)

Provided by: ArtsEdge