Teaching reading comprehension skills to eighth grade students is no easy task. There are so many moving parts: the students have their own cognitive and metacognitive skills to achieve, while external factors like standardized testing play a huge role in shaping their reading skills.
But that doesn't mean that setting an eighth grade reading program has to be difficult. We've rounded up the top 20 resources to help you develop a robust eighth grade reading curriculum.
1. Personal Narrative Graphic Organizers
This handy tool will help your students find the beginning, middle, and end of their own personal stories. Or, they can use it to analyze the stories of others. Either way, it's an excellent way to encourage visual organization of a narrative.
Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers
2. Finding the Main Idea
This graphic organizer stresses one of the most important comprehension strategies: finding the main idea of a non-fiction text. It allows 8th grade students to differentiate between main ideas and supporting details, which is important for many standardized testing question sets.
Learn more: Scholastic Teachables
3. Bridge for Main Events
This graphic organizer helps enforce the eighth grade reading strategy of identifying main events. It is designed to help students organize the main plot points in a narrative. It is useful for all types of narrative texts and is effective instruction in story structure.
Learn more: Scholastic
4. Inference and Predictions
This text and question set focuses on Chicago High Schools and features exercises for grammar school comprehension. The topic also focuses on the transition into high school, so it would be a great piece towards the end of the school year.
Learn more: Center for Urban Education
5. "Call of the Wild" Worksheet
No eighth grade reading program is complete without the classic adventure story from Jack London. This worksheet helps students reflect on the critical details and features of the literature "Call of the Wild." These concepts are also transferable to other classic literature.
Learn more: English Worksheets Land
6. Life Story: Zora Neale Hurston
This activity tells the inspiring story of the famous author Zora Neale Hurston. It encourages students to identify key events and predict outcomes for the nonfiction story. It also includes comprehension test questions.
Learn more: Read Works.org
7. Main Idea with Trains
This graphic organizer has students organize the main idea with trains, with the supporting details following behind the "main idea" engine. This organizer will probably be a familiar review for most of your students since the concept is often introduced from a young age. That makes this the perfect "review" graphic organizer, and a great way to start off the school year.
Learn more: Mrs. Naufal's Nook
8. Analysis of JFK's Berlin Remarks
This worksheet helps students analyze a historical speech at an eighth grade reading level. It also includes comprehension activities to help students fully understand what John F. Kennedy (JFK) said and what he meant during the important speech.
Learn more: Polk Bros. Center for Urban Education
9. 8th Grade STAAR Prep Video
This video is aimed at helping students start their practice for the 8th grade level STAAR reading comprehension exam. It includes information about effective comprehension strategy instruction, and it takes students through the question types.
Learn more: Shera Rasmussen
10. Choctaw Green Corn Ceremony
This online activity is aimed at helping students master non-fiction texts. It includes the audio version of the text, as well as eighth-grade comprehension questions to help the students dive deeper.
Learn more: Readworks.org
11. Short Text on Traveling
This worksheet is a great bell work activity, and it is also perfect for ESL students. It's a great way to have students brainstorm synonyms and contextualize the text in terms of what they already know.
Learn more: iSL Collective
12. Inferencing with Short Film
Yes, you can use short movies to teach reading comprehension skills! These activities are designed to help introduce and drill the inferencing strategy, and they make excellent use of engaging short films that students will love.
Learn more: Teach to Thrive
13. Focus on Non-Fiction Structure
These resources focus on finding the key points in non-fiction texts. They highlight the role of main ideas and supporting details, and they introduce and drill the importance of transition and connection words.
Learn more: In the Classroom with Kristine Nannini
14. Teaching Citations
Without any background knowledge, citations and footnotes can be a tricky topic at the 8th grade reading level. This resource helps students learn about the different ways to cite sources so that they can recognize and produce citations in non-fiction texts.
Learn more: Caffeine Queen Teacher
15. Lockdown Dreams Comprehension Exercise
This worksheet is a short text with some in-depth and personal questions, which makes it a great option for a shorter class, or for the beginning of the school year. It includes a lot of vocabulary-building focus as well. It is also a nice choice for ESL students.
Learn more: iSL Collective
16. Hacked! Fiction Series
This series of stories are offered in an online format, including the audio read-aloud. It also comes with reading comprehension questions that will have students referring back to the story, predicting, and inferencing. It's a fun way to bring your fiction lessons online!
Learn more: Read Works.org
17. The Ultimate List of Middle School Books
No eighth grade language arts class could ever be complete without most of the books on this list! The list also links to inspiration to help you teach everything from figurative language to literary themes alongside each of the books. Plus, these books are engaging ways to bring long-form reading strategies into your eighth grade reading program.
Learn more: 55 8th Grade Books Students Should Have on their Bookshelves
18. Practice Finding Text Evidence
In this series of exercises, students will look at a series of non-fiction texts and find evidence to support claims or ideas. They will have to use skimming, scanning, and search reading techniques to successfully complete the exercises, and it is a great way to introduce and drill these important 8th grade-level reading comprehension strategies.
Learn more: Caffeine Queen Teacher
19. Ecosystem Reading and Comprehension Questions
This text and accompanying worksheet helps reinforce transition words and ideas related to cause and effect. It is an interesting tie-in to the 8th grade life sciences curriculum, and it also focuses on activating students' prior knowledge on the topic. So, it combines a whole host of important 8th grade reading comprehension strategies!
Learn more: Center for Urban Education
20. A Reading Worksheets Gold Mine
This collection of reading comprehension worksheets features both texts with comprehension questions as well as worksheets for specific books and poems that are popular in the eighth grade reading program. You can print and distribute them easily to your students!
Learn more: Englishlinx.com