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.
Standards reflect CCSS ELA, Reading, and Social Studies Standards.

Students will analyze photos for specific details that reveal the owner of a specific room.Then the analysis will include literature but will focus on literary devices and connotations.Also, students will have the opportunity to summarize text and then use evidence to support specific connotations.

This Lesson was created to use in conjunction with materials in Clusive [https://clusive.cast.org], a free, online learning environment that makes materials flexible and accessible.  The Lesson is designed for students in grades 6-8, and targets ELA standards as well as SEL skills of self-awareness and learner agency. As you use this lesson, students will be guided to recognize, understand, and apply key elements of a mystery story, tools that they can use to build learner agency, self-awareness, and comprehension

The Cultivating Washington curriculum is intended to be a go-to resource for Washington state middle school educators seeking student-centered instructional materials that make learning about the history of the Pacific Northwest more relevant and meaningful for students.In addition, it is a resource for agricultural education teachers, parents, and community members interested in helping students discover the history and development of agriculture in the state of Washington.

Students learn about the controversial history of a mural in Anacortes, WA, and consider what it would take to create a more inclusive and accurate mural in Anacortes today. Then students learn about the tribes, immigrants, and settlers in the region where they live and how their stories are represented in local murals in public spaces. Students draw on what they have learned to respond to the unit driving question: What decisions and whose stories define Washington state? Then, drawing on local resources such as tribal members, historical societies, and museums, students work in teams to propose a new mural that tells an inclusive story of the people and place where they live.

Students explore multiple forms of digital etiquette and citizenship. They research current events based around digital concerns and innovations. Eventually, they apply that knowledge to their own lives and use of technology to develop 5 top guidelines for digital device usage for their peers. Students share their presentations and projects in an exhibit-style venue. Using a survey, students vote for their top choices, eventually selecting one choice to implement.Standards:CCSS English Language Arts (Grade 8)Ohio Standards for Technology 

ood! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. These Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students.

Food! is a module broken up into seven parts. Each part contains a series of tasks to complete. Each task contains additional resources to support that task. We have provided a suggested order for the parts and tasks. However, the structure of the guide hopefully allows you to customize your learning experience by selecting which parts, tasks, and resources you would like to utilize and in what order you would like to complete them.

Objective: Using your school’s local version of ISearch, students will gather and cite information from multiple texts and diverse media and draw on information from multiple print or digital sources.Note: If students do not know what a primary source document is and why researchers use them, you may wish to tell them that primary source documents include letters, diaries, journals, interviews, transcripts, speeches, and pamphlets. Researchers and historians use them as first-hand accounts of something that happened at a certain point in time.Instructions: Use the ISearch BINGO card and one of the three worksheets to teach students how to use ISearch to find academic sources. Worksheet A introduces students to the ISearch interface. Worksheet B introduces students to the ISearch interface by comparing it with another search tool of your choosing. Worksheet C introduces students to the ISearch interface and requires students to cite sources correctly in an annotated bibliography.Distribute the ISearch BINGO Worksheet of your choosing (A, B, or C) for Grades 6-8.Encourage students to read all directions along with you first so you can help them understand.Demonstrate how to use ISearch to find sources and how to create citations or find citation helpers. See demo instructions.Pass out the BINGO cards. Explain how to get a BINGO. Tell students that they can choose any of the topics in the box as a search term when looking for that source. They can mix and match. In other words, a student can do a search for civil rights for B1 and suffrage for I6, or the student could do civil rights across the row.ModificationsEncourage students to work in teams to find the sources.Change the search terms in the BINGO card to relate to those with a current classroom assignment.Time Required: Activities in Worksheet A can be completed in 25-45 minutes. Activities in Worksheet B can be completed in 45-65 minutes. Activities in Worksheet C can be completed in 90 minutes.

Every media source has a story to tell--a driving purpose. The media that people consume largely shapes their world views. The US public is becoming more divided partially due to the consumption of increasingly biased news. As a critical consumer of media, It is important to be able to separate fact from opinion. In this unit, adapted from the high school version, students will become critical consumers of news, by identifying media bias in order to become better informed citizens.  NOTE: This unit has been adapted for use at the middle school level from the resource Identifying Media Bias in News Sources by Sandra Stroup, Sally Drendel, Greg Saum, and Heidi Morris.

This resource includes multiple lesson plans developed by Washington State teacher John Zingale and can be taught as part of in-person, hybrid, or remote instructional settings. The core content areas include social studies, civics, and media literacy and are designed for use with students in grades 6-12. Additional integrations include ELA, world languages, mathematics, physical education and science. These lessons integrate both state and national civics instruction using project-based and collaborative learning strategies. Features of these lessons include:student researchcollaborative learningdigital learning strategieslateral readingdesign and creation of infographicsTo support these lessons, additional resources are provided to help educators and families with understanding and teaching information and media literacy to young people. Resources include:introductions to media literacyeducator guidesparent guidesstudent learning standards

As part of Washington's Kip Tokuda Memorial Civil Liberties Public Education Program, which strives to educate the public regarding the history and the lessons of the World War II exclusion, removal, and detention of persons of Japanese ancestry, KSPS Public Television and Eastern Washington educators Starla Fey, Leslie Heffernan, and Morgen Larsen have produced Injustice at Home: the Japanese American experience of the World War II Era.

This educational resource--five educational videos and an inquiry-based unit of study--will help students understand Executive Order 9066 and the resulting internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the failure of political leadership to protect constitutional rights, the military experience of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and examples of discrimination and racial prejudice the Japanese-American community faced before, during and after WWII.

In addition, students will analyze the short and long term emotional effects on those who are incarcerated, identify the challenges that people living outside of the exclusion zone faced, examine how some Japanese Americans showed their loyalty during the period of incarceration, and learn about brave individuals who stood up for Japanese Americans during this time.

Students kick off the unit with an analysis of images by engaging in a Four Corners activity, in which they begin to unpack the many positive and negative impacts of innovations on communication, infrastructure, and workers’ rights. After this initial analysis, students listen to oral histories, read narrative accounts, and study photos of people and places, to answer the question: How does innovation impact communities in Washington? Throughout the unit, students research a transformative innovation in workers rights, communication, and infrastructure in order to create a thought-provoking photo essay about how their chosen innovation impacts people and places in Washington.

Students begin this unit by exploring the themes of humanity and community as they discuss  the many factors that influence the development of personal identities. They unpack together how we show versus hide different parts of ourselves, and how our identities can be both fixed and ever-changing. Then, students listen to oral histories by Vietnamese Americans to learn how displacement and resettlement have impacted them personally and shaped their outlook on helping others. Using evidence from these firsthand accounts, students answer the question: What can the experiences of displaced people teach us about community, resilience, and humanity? Throughout this unit, students work in teams to create a podcast where they reflect on their collective responsibility to stand in solidarity with displaced people.

Americans affirmed their independence with the ringing declaration that "all men are created equal." Some of them owned slaves, however,and were unwilling to give them up as they gave speeches and wrote pamphlets championing freedom, liberty, and equality. So "to form a more perfect union" in 1787, certain compromises were made in the Constitution regarding slavery. This settled the slavery controversy for the first few decades of the American republic, but this situation changed with the application of Missouri for statehood in 1819.

Grade Level is 7.6 using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test.

This is the challenging and inspired true story of a little girl who was determined to learn to read, and who went on to be a teacher, the founder of a college, an adviser to statesmen, and a great humanitarian. Mary McLeod Bethune was the fifteenth child of hardworking and god fearing parents. She was the first of their children to be born free. Her ancestry was wholly of African origin, a point of pride throughout her life.

Mrs. Bethune worked untiringly to restore—through education—her people's faith in the magnificent heritage that is rightfully theirs. During the many years of and tribulation, she refused to give up her fondest dream—her own school for Negro children. And, as a shining monument to her hard work and faith, she has given to black youth the thriving institution of Bethune- Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.

In this seminar, you’ll learn about dialogue, including how writers use it to “move” their stories along. As a narrator, you will practice using dialogue, which will help you understand how people involved in conflict interact genuinely. Some lines of dialogue will be longer than others; there’s a reason for that. Some narratives have very little dialogue; there’s a reason for that. Ultimately, you will continue to analyze the perspectives of characters (people) in a narrative setting to better understand the human condition and how their voices contribute to it. This seminar will require innovation on your part, as you will not only learn terminology associated with dialogue, but also put those devices into action as you create your own (mini) narrative with characters who interact.StandardsCC.1.4.9-10.MWrite narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events.CC.1.4.9-10.NEngage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation, establishing one or multiple points of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters.CC.1.4.9-10.PCreate a smooth progression of experiences or events using a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole; provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative. 

Students will learn about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the US response of the Pearl Harbor Day observance.

The Preamble is the introduction to the United States Constitution, and it serves two central purposes. First, it states the source from which the Constitution derives its authority: the sovereign people of the United States. Second, it sets forth the ends that the Constitution and the government that it establishes are meant to serve.

Students learn about the efforts of Ida B. Wells and other Black female journalists who used investigative reporting to challenge ideas and people that perpetuated social and political injustices. Students look to Black female journalists today by learning about Natasha S. Alford’s feature stories on race in Puerto Rico, and draw on past and present examples of journalism to help them respond to the unit driving question: How can journalism challenge inequality and injustice? Students use the tenets of investigative reporting to explore the achievements and challenges of the era, then work to shine a light on the possibilities of racial equity by writing and publishing a feature story about an issue of injustice today.