Eighth Grade - ELA
1: Semester 1
Unit 1: Abigail Adams
Lesson 7
Education
Students read Chapters 13 and 14 of Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution and answer comprehension questions. Students locate a contemporary news article about girls' education and select a paragraph (4–6 sentences) to analyze on a Paragraph Analysis page, determining the role of each sentence and connections between sentences. The lesson's 'Ideas to Think About' explicitly prompts attention to the structure of a paragraph and the role of different component parts in crafting persuasive writing.
Lesson 8
Genre
Students are given explicit genre definitions in the "Things to Know" section and complete a "Matching Genres" activity in which they categorize book descriptions by genre, practicing recognition of structural and stylistic features. In Activity 2 students first summarize a nonfiction scene from the biography and then are asked to rewrite that same scene in a chosen genre (historical fiction, mystery, science fiction) or as a graphic novel, which has students produce alternate structural forms of the same content. The parent/answer key and examples further show students converting factual summary into genre-based versions, making students engage with different genre conventions.
Lesson 9
The Vice Presidency
Students read original primary-source letters between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson and are asked to write a diary entry from Abigail's point of view, showing engagement with a letter format as a distinct text type. The "Choosing Genres" activity asks students to reimagine the same book in at least two other genres and create new titles and descriptions, prompting students to consider how genre choices change presentation and style. The lesson explicitly prompts students to think about how an author's choice of genre influences decisions and the resulting work, connecting form/genre to meaning and style.
Unit 2: Animal Farm
Lesson 3
The Rebellion
The lesson asks students to review and compare the animals' Seven Commandments with the U.S. Bill of Rights (Option 2) and includes specific questions asking which document places more restrictions on leaders or citizens and which document they would prefer to live under. In Option 1 students compare different characters as leaders and are asked to provide specific examples, which practices comparison across items. The activity pages provide the full texts of the Seven Commandments and prompt written responses comparing the two documents' content and effects.
Lesson 4
Work on the Farm
Students study two distinct text formats (friendly and business letters) and read detailed directions about sender address, date, greeting/salutation, body, closing, signature, and enclosures. Students complete hands-on activities that require arranging parts of a business letter (Jumbled Business Letter) and correcting formatting/punctuation errors in a business letter (Fixing a Business Letter). Students are prompted to consider when each letter format would be used and to write letters using the appropriate format, which contrasts the informal friendly letter with the formal business letter.
Lesson 8
The End of the Rebellion
Students read two sample letters (Sample 1 and Sample 2) and are asked to think about the tone of each and identify which is a friendly letter and which is a business letter. Students discuss with a parent which portions of each letter helped them decide the type, citing tone, formality, and purpose. In Option 2, students explicitly brainstorm three situations for business letters and three for friendly letters, noting recipient and purpose, and then choose a friendly letter idea to write and format.
Final Project
Animal Farm Letter
Students are asked to choose between a friendly letter and a business letter and to "review the differences in tone, audience, and purpose" and the differences in formatting between the two types (Activity 2, Step Two). The unit test asks students to identify whether two example letters are business or friendly and to explain how the tone of a business letter differs from a friendly letter (Activity 5). The rubric and sample letters require students to produce letters that match an appropriate audience, purpose, and structure, reinforcing recognition of organizational features of different letter types.
Unit 3: Einstein Adds a New Dimension
Lesson 1
Expository Writing
Students examine the organization of a nonfiction book (front matter, back matter, table of contents, bibliography, index, appendices, glossaries) and practice using the index and sidebars (Activity 1). Students learn about five modes of expository writing and sketch a graphic representing those types, including Comparison/Contrast as one mode (Activity 2). Students identify and mark indicators of narrative versus expository writing on the book cover and jacket, skim pages to decide whether the book reads as narrative, expository, or both, and justify their choice (Activity 3).
Lesson 7
Relativity
Students read two versions of the same experimental procedure (Version 1 and Version 2) and are asked to identify problems with Version 1 and explain why Version 2 is preferable. The text explicitly points out structural differences (conciseness, naming of tools, and clear transitions) and asks students to notice these problems. The wrapping-up note also states that students will explore the comparison/contrast form of expository writing.
Final Project
Research Paper
Students examine a student model research paper and mark its structure by underlining the thesis, double-underlining topic sentences, circling transition words, and labeling the paper as a problem/solution text with its problem and solutions. Students are asked to think about how a reader approaches an expository text differently from a narrative text and to answer a unit-test question describing two specific ways expository writing differs from narrative writing. The unit presents and teaches different expository structures (process/sequence, cause/effect, comparison/contrast, problem/solution) and asks students to choose one type (including compare/contrast) for their own writing.
Unit 4: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Lesson 12
The Movie Adaptation
Students are asked to finish the novel and then view the 1993 film adaptation, taking notes on changes the director or actors made regarding character, plot, language, setting, or dialect. Students are instructed to consider why those changes were made and to decide if those choices were good, evaluating choices made by the director and actors. Students are prompted to compare how the movie and the novel are similar and different and to discuss whether the directors or actors strayed from the novel and if those changes impacted the movie positively or negatively.
Unit 5: Elijah of Buxton
Lesson 1
Introduction to the Novel
Students are explicitly instructed to identify and analyze a flashback in Chapters 1–2 of Elijah of Buxton (Activity 5), including a student activity page that asks them to highlight the flashback and answer questions about its effectiveness and what it reveals about the narrator. The lesson defines a flashback in 'Things to Know' and directs students to explain why the flashback was used and how it affects understanding of character and events. Students also read multiple texts (the novel chapters plus informational web pages and an author biography), so they encounter different text types and structures.
Lesson 2
The Preacher
Students read two contrasting passages (George Fitzhugh and Frederick Douglass) and answer guided questions that ask them to contrast the views and judge authenticity. Students identify vivid adjectives and underline the repeated verb "whip" in Douglass's passage to analyze how word choice and repetition create persuasive effect. Students also summarize a flashback in Chapter 4 of Elijah of Buxton and explain the purpose that this structural device serves in the story.
2: Semester 2
Unit 1: The House of the Scorpion
Lesson 1
Cloning
Students read multiple nonfiction articles about cloning (Activity 1: six internet sources) and read the first four chapters of The House of the Scorpion, providing them with at least two texts on a related topic. The Parent Plan lists skills that include comparing works on the same topic and comparing persuasive texts that reach different conclusions. In Activity 3 students identify persuasive strategies and note structural elements of persuasive paragraphs (e.g., thesis placement, counterargument and rebuttal).
Lesson 4
Rhetorical and Logical Fallacies
Students read a short persuasive essay ("Human Cloning") and are directed to identify and mark specific rhetorical and logical fallacies (loaded terms, caricatures, leading questions, false assumptions, incorrect premises). Students create advertisements that purposely employ at least three rhetorical or logical fallacies, and they share/discuss those ads with others to identify the devices used. The Parent Plan Skills section explicitly instructs students to "Compare and contrast persuasive texts that reached different conclusions about the same issue" and to analyze how authors reached conclusions by examining evidence and use of fallacies.
Lesson 5
Arguing the Issue
Students read two persuasive essays about cloning and are prompted to summarize each author's main arguments and to note logical and rhetorical fallacies. The "Arguing the Issue" activity page directs students to record the evidence each author presents and to reflect on the strengths of the arguments. The Parent Plan describes the skill of comparing and contrasting persuasive texts and explaining how authors reached their conclusions by analyzing evidence and fallacies.
Lesson 7
One-Act Play
Students are asked to read chapters of the novel and study a sample one-act play, then choose a scene from The House of the Scorpion and turn it into a one-act drama. Students must convert narrative elements into dialogue, indicate stage directions, props, lighting cues, and shape mood and conflict through words and movements. Students are prompted to limit characters and lines and to make clear protagonist/antagonist relationships, which requires them to reformulate the novel's narrative structure into dramatic structure.
Unit 2: Watership Down
Lesson 3
An Epic Journey
Students are asked to identify and record examples of characteristics of fantasy and epic as they read Watership Down (Activity 2 and the Student Activity Page), noting elements such as an omniscient narrator, an amazing hero, and a long journey. The activity directs students to record examples of each listed characteristic in Watership Down, requiring them to analyze the book's genre-based structural features. The Skills section also names the CCSS standard, indicating an expectation that students will consider structure in relation to the text.
Lesson 12
Dramatic Enactment
Students are asked to create a dramatic version of a scene and to consider whether to add or omit material and to include music, lighting, or other effects, which requires them to think about differences between a production and the source text. The Parent Plan explicitly states a skill in which students analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production stays faithful to or departs from the text, evaluating choices made by the director or actors. The lesson also notes that dramatic presentations typically contain some similarities to and differences from original works of literature, signaling attention to how a production can differ from a text.
Unit 3: The Book Thief
Lesson 3
Burning Books
Students select and analyze three Nazi propaganda posters, identifying target audiences, goals, and what makes each poster effective (use of colors, fonts, images) in the Propaganda activity. The lesson asks students to compare Nazi posters to U.S. World War II posters ("think about how they are similar to or different") and to record examples of propaganda across readings, encouraging comparison of multiple visual texts.
Lesson 8
The Thief Strikes Again
Students are instructed to watch two short clips of Hitler speaking and a campaign rally and to take notes on "how he is saying it" and on aspects of the rally that may have been designed to appeal to the crowd. Discussion questions ask students to analyze delivery features (pace, volume, repetition, hand motions) and rally elements (music, marching, flags, crowd response). The Parent Plan skills list also includes delineating a speaker's argument and identifying/evaluating tone, style, and use of language, which directs students to analyze elements of spoken texts.
Lesson 10
The Trilogy of Happiness
Students read three different wartime texts/formats (a PBS article on news and censorship, a 1943 newsreel, and an Ernie Pyle column) and answer guided questions about them. Students are asked to identify informational versus propaganda aspects of the newsreel and to explain how Ernie Pyle's column differs from a regular news article. Students also answer how Pyle's personal, descriptive writing helped Americans better understand the war.
Lesson 11
The Word Shaker
Students are asked in Option 2 to compare primary source documents and historical fiction by brainstorming advantages and disadvantages of each and by choosing three ideas to illustrate with specific examples from the day's primary source readings or from The Book Thief. In Part II students must provide examples that reflect those ideas and are prompted to focus on aspects like writing style or point of view. The Parent Plan Skills list explicitly names 'Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts' as a targeted skill.
Final Project
Think-Tac-Toe
Students are asked to watch the movie or trailer (Activity 4) and "think about how the movie differs from the book," with specific prompts to note changes, omitted or condensed characters/events, and whether the movie has the same impact as the book. The Parent Plan skills list explicitly includes: "Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors." The Discussion Questions prompt students to compare consistency and differences between the movie/trailer and the book and to explain how presentation choices affect viewer/reader response.
Unit 4: To Kill a Mockingbird
Lesson 13
Text and Film
Students are asked to watch the 1964 film and "keep a running list of similarities and differences" between the novel and the movie using a two-column chart. The lesson includes discussion questions that prompt students to identify "the biggest changes made to the novel in the film" and ask "Why do you think those changes were made?" Another question asks how the director used special effects (lighting, music, camera angle) "to help tell the story." The parent plan enumerates concrete structural differences (sequence changes, omissions of scenes, altered character focus) that students can notice and discuss.
Final Project
Oral Book Presentation
Students are shown a sample graphic organizer titled "Book Vs. Movie" that lists how the movie adapts the book, noting omitted scenes and characters and how main character portrayals are maintained. Students plan and create slides that highlight themes, plot, and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird, and one sample explicitly models a comparison between two versions of the story. Students are also asked to use quotations and examples from the text when preparing their presentations, which supports making textual comparisons when prompted.
Unit 5: Great American Poets
Lesson 1
Poetry Basics
Students compare a prose sentence and a poetic excerpt in Activity 1 by noting that both describe the same scene but produce different effects, and they are asked which words make the poem more effective. Students identify and label structural features (line breaks, stanzas, couplets, refrains, rhyme scheme, assonance, and stressed syllables) across multiple poems in the Poetry Vocabulary activity. Students annotate a poem (Activity 2) marking rhyme scheme and meter (iambic pentameter) and are asked to explain why a poet breaks a line in the middle of a thought, linking structure to effect.
Lesson 2
Early American Poetry
Students are instructed in Activity 3 to reread Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" and Paul Revere's first-person account, mark phrases they find effective, and complete a Venn diagram comparing the two texts. The instructions explicitly tell students to note similarities and differences in content, use of literary language, and details and to consider how the differences between the two forms influence the reader. The parent/answer key sections describe contrasts in point of view, rhyme and rhythm, use of figurative language, and differences in purpose and memorability, linking structural differences to meaning and style.
Lesson 3
Figurative Language
Students are asked to read two concrete-shape poems ("A Mouse's Tale" and "Swan and Shadow") and to consider differences in rhyme/rhythm and shape, with the prompt to "consider what makes each one clever or effective." The wrapping-up discussion question explicitly asks whether the concrete poems would be as effective if written as regular verses, prompting students to evaluate how the shape (structure) contributes to effect. In Part I, students compare the opening lines of two poems ("Hope is the thing with feathers" and "There is no frigate like a book") and describe how the two comparisons differ, which requires direct comparison of elements across two texts.
Lesson 4
Poetic Forms
Students are asked in Question 3 to discuss similarities and differences between Longfellow's "The Sound of the Sea" and the traditional Shakespearean sonnet, explicitly focusing on structure and iambic pentameter. Question 1 requires students to mark unstressed and stressed syllables and determine whether a poem uses iambic pentameter and whether it is a sonnet. Activities ask students to identify what makes "John Henry" a ballad and to distinguish blank verse (meter without rhyme) from sonnets, linking form features (rhyme scheme, meter, line length) to genre labels.
Lesson 5
Edgar Allan Poe
Students analyze poetic structure in "The Raven" by marking the end-rhyme scheme and describing the internal rhyme pattern (Reading and Questions, Q3). Students are asked to record at least one line from two different Poe poems that demonstrate his poetic focus (Activity 1, Option 1). Students are instructed to use Poe's poems as a guide for structuring their own poem and to reflect (in discussion questions) on how closely their poem followed Poe's style, including structure and rhyme scheme (Activity 3 and Wrapping Up questions).
Lesson 6
Meaning in Poetry
Students are asked directly to compare Whitman's poems to earlier poems (Question #4 asks how Whitman's poems differ from the ones studied so far). Students reread three free-verse poems and are prompted to identify patterns, repetition, sound devices, and figurative language that create structure (Activity 2). Students analyze punctuation and enjambment and explain how comma use and line breaks create pauses and effects in meaning and style (Activity 3).
Lesson 7
Poetry Analysis
Students read multiple poems of different forms (sonnet, narrative poem/ballad, lyric) and answer questions identifying poem types (e.g., identifying "The New Colossus" as a sonnet and "Casey at the Bat" as a narrative poem). The Poem Analysis student page directs students to analyze rhyme scheme, rhythm/meter, stanzaing, and sound devices, and the vocabulary pages define forms (sonnet, blank verse, iambic pentameter, stanza, ballad). Activity 2 asks students to "think about what made each of those poems effective at telling a story" and to look at line length, rhyme scheme, and rhythm in model narrative poems when planning their own.
Lesson 8
Robert Frost
Students analyze poetic form in Question #1 by identifying "Acquainted with the Night" as a sonnet and noting how Frost's stanza grouping differs from the typical quatrain-based sonnet. In Question #4 students figure out and explain the chain rhyme scheme (AABA-BBCB-CCDC) and how the rhyme links stanzas. In Activity 3 students analyze the function of hyphens and dashes in poems and explain how dashes create pauses and emphasis in specific lines. The Visual Response and Wrapping Up ask students to consider how Gertrude Stein's "Susie Asado" relates to Cubist art and to contrast that poem's unconventional presentation with Frost's vivid nature poems.
Lesson 9
Memorizing Poetry
Students compare two villanelles (Dylan Thomas's and Elizabeth Bishop's) on the Student Activity Page, evaluating how each poem adheres to villanelle rules such as stanza structure, refrains, and rhyme. Students learn explicit villanelle features (5 tercets + quatrain, alternating refrains, rhyme pattern) and answer why the form is challenging and why poets use it, linking form to effect. Students compare Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" with Walt Whitman poems, noting shared free-verse structure, use of repetition, and similar descriptive style. Students evaluate the brevity and syllable count of "In a Station in the Metro," comparing its condensedd structure to a haiku and discussing its imagistic impact.
Lesson 10
Poems about Poetry
The Skills section explicitly lists the standard: "Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style." Activity 1 asks students to reread Marianne Moore's "Poetry" and Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica," underline effective phrases/images, and answer questions on a "Poems About Poetry" page. The Student Activity Page and Parent Plan describe students comparing the two poems and noting tensions or contrasts between elements.
Lesson 11
Editing Your Work
Students read multiple poems (pages 74–80 and linked poems) and answer directed comparison questions. Question 1 asks students to compare two E.E. Cummings poems' use (or lack) of capitalization and to explain the effect of those structural choices. Question 4 asks students to compare Dunbar's "Sympathy" and Angelou's "Caged Bird," noting structural differences (repetition, rhyme versus free verse, stanza treatment) and how these differences affect tone and imagery.
Lesson 12
Reciting Poetry
Students read multiple poems (links to Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Hayden, Giovanni, Glück) and answer comparison questions such as QUESTION #2 asking how "Constantly Risking Absurdity" compares to other poems and QUESTION #3 asking which of three poems about family relationships is most effective. The wrapping-up discussion prompt explicitly asks students to notice how contemporary poets differ from earlier American poets and notes that contemporary works tend not to rhyme or have a standard rhythm. The Parent Plan and Skills section state that students will "read and analyze poetry" including subgenres, which implies attention to different poetic forms.
Final Project
Poetry Journal
Students produce and assemble many different poetic forms in a poetry journal (concrete poem, haiku, limerick, free verse, narrative poem, nature poem, headline poem, etc.), giving them hands-on experience with varied poetic structures. Students answer unit-test questions that identify poem types (e.g., which form allows freedom from rules, which form is blank verse) and analyze specific structural features such as rhyme scheme, meter, punctuation use, and how punctuation affects line function. Students perform close analysis tasks (identify rhyme scheme ABABCC, identify figurative language, explain punctuation joining words into a compound adjective) that require attention to how structural choices operate within single poems.