8th Grade Lesson (by date, oldest first)

THIS IS A PDF FILE

Why teach word meaning through nonsense words?

• Students must use critical thinking to solve
• Students must read the whole passage for context clues
• Students must problem solve to find the best word that makes the most sense.
• They can't find the answer except through problem solving.

All of these are things we want every student to do! This is something that is already adapted for high and low learners.

Starting with three nonsense words gets students going so they can work in groups or independently to decode the meaning of 7 REAL words (selected from the SAT vocabulary list).

This is a perfect activity for group problem solving and critical thinking!

What is it?

Micro texts are made with the intention of getting to the skill or the practice students need FASTER. Each text is less than 400 words. All of the 16 questions is aligned to finding the "bullseye" and helping students think critically about the answer choices and how they can apply critical thinking to get the right answer every time. It also encourages students to read each question and not choose an answer that "feels right".

What's included?

• Google Slides (56 slides)

• PowerPoint (56 slides)

• PDF (26 pages)

• Editable Word file

• Four total passage

• Two micro argumentative texts

• Two micro informational passages

• 16 questions

• Teaching Slides

• Bullseye for students to practice the strategy

• A simple answer key is included as well as a detailed rationale page.

Who's it for?

- Middle and high school

- Teachers who want to teach test strategies before exams

Check out these other resources!

• Intermediate Advanced ELL/EB Practice with 100s of Common Words
• ELL/EB Newcomer Essential Phrases & Vocabulary
• All Things English For Middle & High School Students (best seller)
• Once Upon A Crime
• Revising & Editing Workbook
• Revising & Editing for Group Lessons
• Bell Ringers for the Semester
• Everything Writing

Unlock the power of inferencing with this comprehensive resource pack tailored for middle and high school students. Dive into the world of critical thinking and analysis with 19 unique files, carefully curated to enhance inferencing skills across various mediums.

Delve into captivating texts with a selection of short stories and poems, including "The Chaser," "Rose from the Concrete," "Rolling in the Deep," and "Cry me a River." Each file comes with detailed summaries and thought-provoking questions to stimulate deep comprehension and inferencing abilities.

Equip your students with the tools they need to excel in inferencing with supplementary materials, such as checking account statements for real-world application and a list of words describing tone to aid in textual analysis.

Explore the intricacies of inferencing through engaging activities, including an Inferencing Lesson with 26 slides designed for both group instruction and individual practice. With meticulously crafted lessons, students will develop a keen eye for detail and learn to draw insightful conclusions from diverse sources.

Unleash the power of music, poetry, literature, and more as students analyze and infer meaning through a variety of mediums. Whether used for group lessons, individual practice, or assessments, this resource pack provides all the materials you need for rapid inferencing success.

Plus, with answer keys included for all activities, you can streamline your grading process and focus on what matters most: empowering your students to become master inferencers. Elevate your teaching and transform your classroom into a hub of critical thinking and discovery with this inferencing activity!

Elevate your students' short response writing skills and prepare them for success on the STAAR test with this comprehensive Extended Constructed Response (ECR) lesson designed for middle and high school classrooms. This engaging PowerPoint lesson offers educators a valuable tool to assess and guide student learning effectively.

Key Features:

1. Sample Response Evaluation: Dive into three sample extended constructed responses and guide your students through the process of critically analyzing and scoring each one. This lesson provides detailed criteria and rubrics to help teachers accurately assess student work.
2. STAAR Test Practice: Prepare your students for the rigor of the STAAR test with targeted practice exercises. This lesson includes a variety of short stories and prompts that mirror the format and style of STAAR test questions, allowing students to familiarize themselves with the expectations and requirements of the exam.
3. Interactive Learning: Engage your students with interactive activities and discussions that encourage active participation and deeper understanding.
4. Teacher Resources: Empower educators with comprehensive teacher guides, answer keys, and additional resources to support lesson implementation and facilitate classroom instruction. These lesson materials are user-friendly and adaptable, making it easy for teachers to integrate them into their existing curriculum.
5. Skill Development: Foster critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing proficiency in your students as they practice crafting concise and well-supported extended constructed responses. This lesson emphasizes essential skills such as citing evidence, structuring responses, and addressing prompt requirements effectively.

Why Choose This Lesson:

• Rigorous and standards-aligned content designed to meet the needs of middle and high school students.

• Engaging and interactive activities that promote student engagement and academic growth.

• Easy-to-use resources and materials for seamless lesson implementation and classroom management.

• Comprehensive preparation for the STAAR test, ensuring that students feel confident and capable on exam day.

Empower your students to excel in short response writing and conquer the challenges of the STAAR test with this dynamic and comprehensive lesson. Elevate your teaching and ignite a passion for learning with these innovative instructional materials. Download this lesson today and watch your students thrive!

What's Included:

• Student lesson with 42 PowerPoint slides
• Checklists for 3 sample ECRs
• Scaffolded response template
• Templates for in-class scoring (stars)
• 2 Texts to read & write about
• Multiple opportunities for students to speaking, listening, thinking, creating, and evaluating
• Included in Word and PDF

Need to teach tone? Do it in a way your students will immediately understand through greeting cards! This is such a great way to also introduce non-fiction elements such as audience, message, and purpose.

The cards are simple to understand but require a little inferencing too. Using greeting cards means it's a lesson where students can learn and practice quickly.

The lesson has increased complexity, gradual release through group and independent work, and is adapted with a word bank.

What's Included:

• Detailed lesson on what tone is and isn't
• How to identify tone.
• Notes template for students to fill in during the lesson.
• Group practice with explanation.
• Individual practice.
• A two question formative assessment.

Get ready for argumentative units with this engaging activity centered around persuasive techniques in rhetorical devices, and logical fallacies.

Teacher students what makes a good and bad argument with a short lesson and 5 practice paragraphs to evaluate for effectiveness. Afterwards, students can practice rhetorical devices in advertisements and analyze why the device was chosen (author's purpose).

ALSO INCLUDED IS AN EXTENSION ACTIVITY where students can get creative and make their own ads.

- Teacher directions

- Grading Rubric

- Student instructions

- Research and Brainstorm document

(no templates for creation are included)

PROVIDED IN WORD/POWERPOINT & PDF

Elevate your students' short response writing skills and prepare them for success on the STAAR test with this comprehensive Short Constructed Response (SCR) lesson designed for middle and high school classrooms. This engaging PowerPoint lesson offers educators a valuable tool to assess and guide student learning effectively.

Key Features:

1. Sample Response Evaluation: Dive into three sample short constructed responses and guide your students through the process of critically analyzing and scoring each one. This lesson provides detailed criteria and rubrics to help teachers accurately assess student work.
2. STAAR Test Practice: Prepare your students for the rigor of the STAAR test with targeted practice exercises. This lesson includes a variety of short stories and prompts that mirror the format and style of STAAR test questions, allowing students to familiarize themselves with the expectations and requirements of the exam.
3. Interactive Learning: Engage your students with interactive activities and discussions that encourage active participation and deeper understanding.
4. Teacher Resources: Empower educators with comprehensive teacher guides, answer keys, and additional resources to support lesson implementation and facilitate classroom instruction. These lesson materials are user-friendly and adaptable, making it easy for teachers to integrate them into their existing curriculum.
5. Skill Development: Foster critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing proficiency in your students as they practice crafting concise and well-supported short constructed responses. This lesson emphasizes essential skills such as citing evidence, structuring responses, and addressing prompt requirements effectively.

Why Choose This Lesson:

• Rigorous and standards-aligned content designed to meet the needs of middle and high school students.

• Engaging and interactive activities that promote student engagement and academic growth.

• Easy-to-use resources and materials for seamless lesson implementation and classroom management.

• Comprehensive preparation for the STAAR test, ensuring that students feel confident and capable on exam day.

Empower your students to excel in short response writing and conquer the challenges of the STAAR test with this dynamic and comprehensive lesson. Elevate your teaching and ignite a passion for learning with these innovative instructional materials. Download this lesson today and watch your students thrive!

• Student lesson with 41 PowerPoint slides
• Checklists for 3 sample SCRs
• Scaffolded response template
• Templates for in-class scoring (stars)
• 2 Texts to read & write about
• Multiple opportunities for students to speaking, listening, thinking, creating, and evaluating
• Included in Word and PDF

Graphic Features of Text fits in perfectly with informational units. While teaching summarizing, author's purpose, and analyzation, teachers can present charts, and other elements of text structure to further increase student's learning.

What's Included:

• 27 slide lesson that covers the features of texts
• (2) Student Practice Activities with short informational texts attached to graphs for student practice during and after the lesson.
• Instructions for an engaging student project writing their own informational texts and making a chart to support their writing.
• Examples galore to help students understand graphic features of text, and how to complete the independent project.

All files come in Word, or Powerpoint with a PDF for easy printing. Questions presented focus on high level learning and challenging student thinking.

Sample Questions from Student Practice:

• What purpose does the graph serve to support the ideas presented in the text?
• What does the included graph help the reader understand about renewable energy?
• How might the time young people spend online relate to their mental health? Use the data in the charts or text evidence to support your answer.
• Choose one of the graphs for this question: how does the inclusion of this graph help to strengthen the author’s claim? Include the claim, graph title and text evidence in your response.

Unlock the power of sentence revision and combination with this comprehensive resource tailored for both high school and middle school English students. Designed to enhance critical thinking skills while honing essential writing abilities, this teaching tool offers a dynamic blend of test preparation materials, engaging worksheets, and collaborative group activities.

What's Inside:

• 15 pages of meticulously crafted PDF worksheets that cover a spectrum of sentence revision and combination exercises.
• 22 PowerPoint slides packed with visually stimulating content to reinforce concepts and aid comprehension.
• 3 versatile activities catered for independent work, group collaboration, and a summative assessment, ensuring diverse learning experiences for every student.

Benefits:

• Ideal for test preparation, this resource equips students with the necessary skills to tackle revising and editing tasks with confidence.
• Foster critical thinking abilities through challenging exercises that encourage students to analyze and improve upon existing sentences.
• Suitable for both individual study and group work, promoting collaborative learning and peer-to-peer support.
• Enhance writing proficiency by mastering the art of sentence structure, coherence, and cohesion.

Whether you're gearing up for standardized testing or seeking to bolster writing skills in the classroom, this resource offers a comprehensive toolkit for educators and students alike. Get ready to elevate your English curriculum with engaging activities that inspire growth, mastery, and creativity.

The ultimate English Skills Workbook and Slides Bundle – a comprehensive solution to engage and educate middle and high school students! Whether utilized as homework assignments or dynamic warm-up activities at the start of class, this bundle is designed to maximize group lessons and boost academic performance.

The workbook and slides are perfectly aligned, ensuring a seamless learning experience that captivates students' attention. These incredible resources have been meticulously crafted to complement the All Things English For Middle and High School book.

With this comprehensive bundle, teachers possess the key to effectively teach and reinforce essential English skills.

The workbook comprises an extensive collection of 200 thought-provoking questions, encompassing 11 comprehensive sections expertly aligned with state standards for grades 6-12.

Immerse students in a transformative learning experience as they tackle critical topics such as: appositives, apostrophes, capitalization, commonly confused words, clauses, colons, combining sentences, commas, quotation marks & commas, semicolons, and pronoun-antecedent agreement. This all-encompassing workbook ensures thorough coverage of the skills required for academic excellence.

Empower students to excel in English language arts with workbook and slides bundle.

200 questions across 11 sections all aligning with state standards for grades 6-12.

1.Appositives

2.Apostrophes

3.Capitalization

4.Commonly Confused Words

5.Clauses

6.Colons

7.Combining Sentences

8.Commas

9.Quotation Marks & Commas

10.Semicolons

11.Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement

Check out these other resources!

• ELA Test Prep, Study Guide & Activities Bundle (new)
• All Things English For Middle & High School Students (best seller)
• Once Upon A Crime
• Bell Ringers for the Semester
• Everything Writing

Elevate your students' short response writing skills and prepare them for success on the STAAR test with these comprehensive Extended Constructed Response (ECR) and Short Constructed Response (SCR) lessons designed for middle and high school classrooms. The engaging PowerPoint lessons offer educators a valuable tool to assess and guide student learning effectively.

Key Features:

1. Sample Response Evaluation: Dive into three samples per constructed responses (6 total) and guide your students through the process of critically analyzing and scoring each one. This lesson provides detailed criteria and rubrics to help teachers accurately assess student work.
2. STAAR Test Practice: Prepare your students for the rigor of the STAAR test with targeted practice exercises. This lesson includes a variety of short stories and prompts that mirror the format and style of STAAR test questions, allowing students to familiarize themselves with the expectations and requirements of the exam.
3. Interactive Learning: Engage your students with interactive activities and discussions that encourage active participation and deeper understanding.
4. Teacher Resources: Empower educators with comprehensive teacher guides, answer keys, and additional resources to support lesson implementation and facilitate classroom instruction. These lesson materials are user-friendly and adaptable, making it easy for teachers to integrate them into their existing curriculum.
5. Skill Development: Foster critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing proficiency in your students as they practice crafting concise and well-supported extended constructed responses. This lesson emphasizes essential skills such as citing evidence, structuring responses, and addressing prompt requirements effectively.

Why Choose This Lesson:

• Rigorous and standards-aligned content designed to meet the needs of middle and high school students.

• Engaging and interactive activities that promote student engagement and academic growth.

• Easy-to-use resources and materials for seamless lesson implementation and classroom management.

• Comprehensive preparation for the STAAR test, ensuring that students feel confident and capable on exam day.

Empower your students to excel in short response writing and conquer the challenges of the STAAR test with this dynamic and comprehensive lesson. Elevate your teaching and ignite a passion for learning with these innovative instructional materials. Download this lesson today and watch your students thrive!

What's Included:

• Student lesson with 83 PowerPoint slides
• Checklists for 6 sample ECRs
• Scaffolded response templates
• Templates for in-class scoring (stars)
• 4 Texts to read & write about
• Multiple opportunities for students to speaking, listening, thinking, creating, and evaluating
• Included in Word and PDF

Word Meaning with Nonsense Words

Why teach word meaning through nonsense words (context clues only)?

• Students must use critical thinking to solve
• Students must read the whole passage for context clues
• Students must problem solve to find the best word that makes the most sense.
• They can't find the answer except through problem solving.

All of these are things we want every student to do! This is something that is already adapted for high and low learners.

Starting with three nonsense words gets students going so they can work in groups or independently to decode the meaning of 7 REAL words (selected from the SAT vocabulary list).

This is a perfect activity for group problem solving and critical thinking!

Finding the meaning of words: in context, with a definition and from the Latin or Greek base. Four teaching pages are included for self-guided learning along with 7 student pages for practice with various shortened reading passages.

INCLUDED:

• 3 Self-grading Google Forms
• Editable Word Doc
• PDF
• Reading Passage
• Teaching pages
• Answer Key

BUNDLE & SAVE: ELA Test Prep, Study Guide & Activities Bundle

Word Meaning with Greek & Latin

✔️Need to teach Greek & Latin along with Context Clues?

✔️Looking for way to get your students thinking critically & making connections?

✔️Need to integrate vocabulary in a meaningful way?

This activity includes worksheets, task cards and Google Quizzes for vocab practice

Students will use key words from the definitions in the first activity to determine the meaning of the Greek or Latin prefix. By recognizing the prefixes in words they recognize (and some they won't) students will begin making connections to other words they hear and read. This is a natural way to build in vocabulary to daily instruction that includes context clues and the Greek and Latin.

Included:

• Greek & Latin Roots Exploration: Dive into 45 carefully selected words, each featuring 9 impactful prefixes from the rich realms of Latin and Greek languages.
• Word Definitions: Equip your students with a solid understanding of each word, laying the foundation for deeper language comprehension.
• Fill in the Blank Sentences: Immerse your class in the learning process with cloze sentences that challenge them to apply their newfound knowledge in context.
• Task Cards: Make learning interactive and enjoyable with task cards that encourage independent exploration and reinforce language skills.
• Google Quizzes: Easily accessible quizzes that provide instant feedback, saving you valuable time and promoting a tech-savvy learning environment.

Vocabulary Starter

NEED TO TEACH VOCABULARY IN YOUR MIDDLE OR HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM AND YOU'RE NOT SURE WHERE TO START?

You came to the right place! I have been teaching for 5+ years, I have my Master's in Education with a focus on Literacy and I didn't know where to start.

So, I went back to everything I learned in my graduate program and re-read everything I could find.

I wrote & designed a student-engaging template to help students in my classroom to deeply internalize a word. I gathered key word lists when I didn't have a word from our daily reading, and thought about how to teach vocabulary so my love of etymology and words could be shared with my 10th graders. I've included all that and a guide to help other teachers get started with implementing and teaching vocabulary in THEIR classrooms.

Is this book for me?

• You want to teach vocabulary explicitly
• You want flexibility to choose your words daily based on what you’re reading
• You need versatility to choose your own words from a given list
• You want your students to deeply internalize the vocabulary they learn
• You’re not sure where to start

Then this book is for you!

Adaptable to every classroom in every situation, this is more than a fill-in-the-blank activity. Your students will have a guide to build a vocabulary for a lifetime of learning.

WHY TEACH VOCABULARY EXPLICITLY?

Generating curiosity and delight in playing with words supports long-term memory, enhances the connection between orthography and meaning, and develops a disposition which stimulates word consciousness. It also builds vocabulary! All of these are a part of a vocabulary rich classroom environment.

Two products in one bundle for even more practice and test prep!

The first product gives you a class lesson with group practice, individual practice and a summative assessment over revising and combing sentences. Because these are closely connected skills that require similar skill sets, your students will have one lesson that can prep them for these areas in testing and writing.

Use the second product for reinforcement, practice or quizzes on combining sentences. This includes a refresher page that students can use for self-guided learning or reference.

*Isolated practice for Revising Sentences coming soon!

Engage your students with a complete and ready-to-use teaching resource for S.E. Hinton’s classic novel, The Outsiders.  This comprehensive package includes everything you need to deliver an effective and engaging literary unit:

• Detailed Lesson Plan: A well-structured, day-by-day guide that covers key themes, character development, and essential vocabulary.

• Scope & Sequence: A clear outline that maps out the learning objectives, pacing, and essential skills for the entire unit.

• PowerPoint Presentation: Visually appealing and informative slides designed to enhance understanding and foster class discussions, covering important quotes, plot points, and character analysis.

This resource is perfect for middle school and high school English teachers looking to create a rich, interactive, and meaningful learning experience for their students.  Whether you are a new teacher or a seasoned educator, this package saves you time and provides quality materials that engage students and deepen their understanding of The Outsiders.

This lesson emphasizes identifying stress as a process that takes place in the brain and body, identifying when stress can be helpful (eustress), when stress becomes overwhelming (distress), and emphasizes the use of coping skills to mitigate the negative effects of stress.

I find older kids often know their preferred copings skills and have often already spent time with their helping adults exploring/practicing them. So, this lesson does NOT teach specific coping skills. Instead, it explains what is going on in the brain and body when stress is felt, how stress is natural and normal, and why use of coping skills is important to capitalize on stress when we need it. Teaching about stress as normal, and even positive, offers a validating and empowering approach to encouraging the use of positive coping skills.

The slides and worksheet are simple to increase comprehension and suit middle through high school students.

This lesson includes presentation notes (discussion points and questions slide-by-slide included) (2 pages), slides to present (8 slides) , and a worksheet (1 page).

This bundle combines general information of managing stress and how coping skills work to improve mental health with a lesson specific to testing anxiety.

Stress management explores identifying stress as a process that takes place in the brain and body, identifying when stress can be helpful (eustress), when stress becomes overwhelming (distress), and emphasizes the use of coping skills to mitigate the negative effects of stress.

Coping skills explore multiple options for positive copings skills and encourages students to identify one that works for them. The lesson looks at positive vs. negative coping skills, problem-focused vs. emotion-focused coping skills, and how coping skills work to affect thoughts, feelings and actions.

Managing Testing Anxiety aims to give students the tools to feel prepared to manage the stress that may arise when preparing for or taking a test- working self-awareness and self-management.

Together these lessons create a comprehensive week of preparing students to effective manage stress and anxiety relating to tests and academics generally.

This bundle includes 3 presentations, 2 worksheets, a project, and a guide for each lesson.

These two lessons naturally go hand in hand!

Stress management explores identifying stress as a process that takes place in the brain and body, identifying when stress can be helpful (eustress), when stress becomes overwhelming (distress), and emphasizes the use of coping skills to mitigate the negative effects of stress.

Coping skills explore multiple options for positive copings skills and encourages students to identify one that works for them. The lesson looks at positive vs. negative coping skills, problem-focused vs. emotion-focused coping skills, and how coping skills work to affect thoughts, feelings and actions.

Together these lesson explain the processes behind stress and how coping skills counteract when stress becomes overwhelming.

This build includes 2 presentations ( 7 slides in one, 8 slides in another), a stress management worksheet (1 page), a coping skills worksheet (1 Page) that can accompany a no-prep activity, and guides for both lessons.

On a smartboard on via personal device, share a morning yoga routine with your students.

We have shared this at school assemblies across the US for all grade levels pre-k-8th grade

How to have better mornings is a yoga and mindfulness lesson plan that you can repeat over and over.

With breathing, mindfulness, and yoga poses, start your day off on the right side of the bed (or classroom)

In Yoga, the Yamas and Niyamas are a moral code of conduct, a guideline on how to live. By introducing these principles to tweens and teens, we give them an opportunity to recognize and enhance how they behave toward others, and how they care for themselves.

Yamas include five guidelines that support how each of us can be a good person to others, the world, and ourselves. Because teens are formalizing who they are becoming, they need to be reminded where they want to go and who they want to become so they can choose the attitudes, behaviors, and make decisions that support becoming that.  Niyamas describe the principles of being a good person. Through them, we build character which helps us on our path to becoming who we know we truly can be. We learn mindfulness and self-discipline so that we can be good citizens in the world.

These lesson plans can be used as a yoga class series, or easily incorporated into the school classroom.

• Each of the 10 lesson plans breaks down one of the Yamas or Niyamas and includes; introduction to that specific core value, a discussion guide, small group work or activity, breathing exercises, and yoga poses to challenge and engage children.

The Yamas and Niyamas Lesson Unit is a 47-page PDF download which you can view on your phone, tablet, computer or print out onto paper. The lesson unit helps children learn the concepts of the yoga philosophy, the context for the Yamas and Niyamas in everyday life, and how to incorporate these values at school, in sports, and at home.