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.

8th Grade Historical Literacy consists of two 43 minute class periods. Writing is one 43 minute block and reading is another. The teacher has picked themes based on social studies standards, and a read-aloud novel based on social studies serves as the mentor text for writing and reading skills. More social studies content is addressed in reading through teaching nonfiction reading skills and discussion.

Students must "become" a character in a novel in order to describe themselves and other characters using powerful adjectives.

In this three week unit, students will practice skills related to argumentative writing. They will ultimately write an argumentative/persuasive letter to the school board regarding school safety policy.

A tool that helps students integrate text-based details/evidence into their speech and writing.

Students will discuss the definition of a biography and determine what elements it contains. They will research a famous person and create a web graphic organizer with key achievements and personal information from their life. Peer feedback will be given on the web creation and then an oral presentation will be given.

Students must think critically to create comic strips highlighting six important scenes from a book they have read.

Through a series of picture book read-alouds, students engage in critical discussion of complex issues of race, class, and gender.

The students are introduced to the research process through an assignment (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aV1canXyzEv0imNlA3VgYuAqXqJV4ax7xv0opIt4mtQ/edit?usp=sharing) that requires them to perform research on an individual who has had to overcome challenges and has benefitted others (eg. Jackie Robinson)

I want to work towards making them more savvy researchers as well as more digitally literate. I envision this lesson as part of a focus on conducting quality research. Another lesson, probably prior to this, would be on identifying credible sources of research. A follow-up lesson could easily be on performing effective web searches in research.

Students read literary and informational texts about human interaction with animals and nature. They understand how authors portray animals to serve a purpose and make a comment about human interaction with animals. Students then explore scientific and personal accounts of animal cognition to express their understanding of Jack London’s portrayal of Buck and his interaction with humans in The Call of the Wild.

This lesson brings together digital mapping and the Chronicling America newspaper database as part of an inquiry into how and where the women's suffrage movement took place in the United States. Primary source newspaper articles published between 1911-1920 and maps from 1918-1920 are used to prompt student research into how women organized, the type of elections that women could participate in, and the extent to which the 19th Amendment transformed voting rights in the U.S.

Google Scholar Citations provide a simple way for students to keep track of citations to their articles. When students are using Google Docs to write their papers, they can easily link and cite the articles used for references.

For this lesson, students will learn how to cite in-text in MLA. They will watch a video, be directed to an easy to understand web page with citation examples, and even be able to complete a worksheet on citing in-text in MLA. Once students are done with this lesson, they will be ready to cite in-text in their own research paper.

For this lesson students will learn how to create a Works Cited page in MLA. They will watch a video, play games, and read a handbook to learn the many steps and processes required in a Works Cited page.

Using their new skills in deconstructing advertisements, students will look at advertisements through the lens of gender.  Students will be encouraged to critically analyze the cultural stereotypes for men and women. Students will deconstruct advertisements based on gender representation.Rationale: Students will begin to see how believing in stereotypes can lead towards a negative self image for men and women.  This is Part 4 of a 5 part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

After students have read through The Giver, they will learn about symbolism and find the ways the author used symbolism throughout the book. After they complete a chart on symbolism, they will create a symbol that describes themselves. They will present their symbol project through Voicethread.com.

Students evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different mediums and then compare and contrast the structure of the texts they have viewed/read to consider how the texts use different structures to convey similar ideas.

After students have read Out of the Dust, they will create a Glogster. They will write about the theme, use their vocabulary words in writing, write using similes, metaphors, and personification in poetry, compare and contrast Billie Jo's experience to someone else in history, and be able to pick an option from a list. They will use their creativity to make their poster appealing to the reader.

The framers of the Constitution designed three branches of government. The role of the legislative branch was to make the laws, the role of the executive branch was to enforce the laws and the judicial branch was to interpret the laws. The constitution is set up in seven sections or articles and also has an introduction called the preamble.

You, your classmates, and your community are diverse whether you realize it or not. You probably come from different heritages, have differing religious beliefs, and have different family backgrounds. This is no different than both the American Indians already living in America, as well as the first colonists who came here. How did so many nationalities, cultural backgrounds, ethnic origins, and religious beliefs all end up in one country? This unit will guide you to understand how European, American Indian, Asian, and African people all came to live together in the Western Hemisphere.