Describes how the author teaches her eighth-grade students to revise their writing, providing "working revision days" in class, offering direction and structure, and thereby helping students learn how much impact going back to a piece of writing and making sweeping changes can have on the end result. (SR)

An effective American History-English course, emphasizing acting, interviewing, and writing skills, is described. (JH)

Describes an eighth-grade unit on World War II, in which students work in groups to create a research/presentation project. Discusses making the subject manageable, group responsibilities, evaluation of group presentations, steps leading to the lesson, results, and going beyond the subject. Offers an 87-item list of books and a 39-item list of…

Describes an open-discussion format for an eighth grade literature class in which students engage in higher order inquiry and clarification skills which then transfer to their reading and writing tasks. Provides rules for open discussion: be courteous; tolerate silence; and self-evaluate. Includes a sample discussion cue sheet. (MM)

Describes the author's first teaching year in an eighth-grade literature class in which the students had no interest in the topic. Introduces "authentic talk" to engage the students. Discusses how the students' interest in reading increased as they read and discussed favorite works of children's literature. (SG)

Describes a four week collaborative writing unit designed to develop students' sense of audience by producing a magazine to orient fifth grade students to junior high school. Discusses how students developed the idea, conducted interviews, wrote articles, used computers to produce the magazine, and distributed copies of their magazine. (RS)

Presents several class activities for eighth and ninth graders that explore how different readings of a text are constructed, what values each reading supports, and whose interests it serves. Discusses multiple meanings, constructed readings, dominant and resistant readings, and reading character. (SR)

Describes how an intelligent and articulate eighth grade student, who could neither read nor write, was able to participate in Directed Individualized Reading (DIR) with the help of books on audiocassettes. (PRA)

A teacher initiates and successfully develops a new method for increasing the vocabulary of eighth grade students. The new method abandons rote-memory techniques for a method which allows the students to choose the words they will learn while participating in the teaching of the new vocabulary. (LF)

Describes a writing project designed to encourage eighth-grade students to examine their past with specific objectives to: (1) complement the speech and reading components of a theme on childhood and youth; (2) introduce or review basic mechanical skills and basic research skills; and (3) introduce basic tools of expressive writing.(NH)

Describes an interdisciplinary unit combining eighth-grade language arts and U.S. history, based on the study of the immigrant experience and involving writing across the curriculum and role-playing. (MM)

Offers a close look at how three eighth-grade students used their writer's notebooks, examining what they thought of their writer's notebooks, what purposes they used them for, and how their responses changed over the course of the school year. Notes that the authors learned that their involvement in the writer's notebook was vital. Includes…

Describes how students in an 8th-grade rural English classroom were focused and engaged over a 9-week period as they investigated and researched a poem of their own choice by a Native American poet, and wrote a hypertext web of their research journey. Notes that students experienced text in a new way, as a network of links. (SR)

Describes a successful paper exchange program between eighth-grade students and high school seniors. States that the peer evaluations created audience awareness and motivated students' writing efforts. (MM)

Details an interdisciplinary video project used by an eighth-grade English teacher to tie the flora, fauna, forces of nature, and historical events in the book "Prairie Songs" to what students are learning about in social studies and in science. Describes goals and resources for the project, student questions, researching topics, writing…