This article describes an activity that one science teacher uses with her eighth grade class on the first day of school. Wanting to start the year off "right" (whatever that is), this teacher purposely plans to model the thinking behavior she expects from her students and to let them have some fun to settle those first-day jitters. She also wants…

The author describes teaching eighth-grade students about the civil rights movement. Teachers used photographs of students in the 1950s as a central theme of their unit about the U.S. civil rights movement. Using these photographs as a learning tool inspired the students to be engaged in history. At the end of the unit, students were able to…

This 21st Century Skills Map is the result of hundreds of hours of research, development and feedback from educators and business leaders across the nation. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has issued this map for the core subject of English.

This latest annually produced Iowa Kids Count data book, "Iowa Kids Count 2009: Trends in the Well-Being of Iowa Children," provides data on 18 different indicators of child and family well-being at the United States, Iowa, substate and county-level. The 18 indicators presented in the data book contain an expanse of data from economic,…

A proposal is made for creating a one-month study unit for the study of Haiti by eighth grade, social studies students. Background information on Haiti's geography, population, economy, culture, and history is provided. Ideas for three lesson plans on Haiti include the iron market in Haiti, Haitian history, and the role of voodoo in Haitian…

This textbook covers two years' work intended for grades seven and eight. The book is divided into approximately 150 carefully planned lessons for each year's work. These lessons are grouped into chapters, each composed of a series of related units that center on a common theme. The material on which conversation and written exercises are based…

In this art activity, eighth grade students use charcoal to draw space art. This versatile medium helps the students see and use dark and light in their forms to show real space and depth. (RM)

The National Indian Education Study is a two-part study designed to describe the condition of education for American Indian/Alaska Native students in the United States. The study was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics for the U.S. Department of Education, with the support of the Office of Indian Education. This report, Part…

Virtual environments are able to extend the space of interaction beyond the classroom. In order to analyze how distributed cognition functions in such an extended space, we suggest focusing on the architecture of intersubjectivity. The Euroland project--a virtual land created and populated by seven classrooms supported by a team of…

This textbook is the third of a three-book series on English for the use of elementary parochial schools. These books are based on the requirements in English of the Regents of the University of the State of New York and of the New York City Schools and contain the grade matter called for in English of the syllabi of the parochial schools of most…

Offers reasons why algebra should not be taught in the eighth grade, suggesting that this subject be replaced by a challenging, engaging alternative. Also suggests enriching the mathematics program to bring more students into mathematics classes. (JN)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a survey of American students' knowledge and skills in different subjects at grades 4, 8, and 12. NAEP combines the samples of performances to provide information about the knowledge and skills of students in the nation as a whole, in each participating state, and in different demographic…

Attitudes toward mathematics and attitudes toward computers were examined for 1,018 grade 8 students and 800 grade 12 students. The female students were more likely than the male students to associate negative attitudes toward mathematics with negative attitudes toward computers. Participation in an eighth-grade mathematics course with a computer…

Presents two standards-based language arts activities for middle school students. The first involves collecting family photographs, writing a descriptive essay based on each one, and publishing the final product using Microsoft Publisher. The second involves creating one-page autobiographies, designing a publishable product, and publishing it…

Professional Development Schools (PDSs) can potentially affect the quality of teaching and learning of students in Grades K-16. The authors describe the collaborations among teacher education, arts and science, and K-12 classroom teacher faculties involved in a 5-year PDS partnership at Kansas State University. A 15-member language arts team…