Common Core Standards
Grade 8
Reading RI.8.7
Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums (e.g., print or digital text, video, multimedia) to present a particular topic or idea.
Print is good at conveying a lot of information in a small amount of space, but it's absolutely horrible at holding people's attention (especially when it's written in 8 point font with tiny margins). Videos are great at showing things that are very difficult to describe, but can't convey as much information as reading a textbook. Everything has its pros and cons, and this Common Core Standard asks students to think about why someone would choose to explain something with the medium they did. (We would love to see someone try to explain the sound of a helicopter using just words.)
Aligned Resources
- Teaching A Little Princess: Follow the Leader
- Teaching Maniac Magee: Exploring Homelessness
- Teaching Dragonwings: Disasters
- Teaching The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963: Let's Do the Time Warp
- Teaching Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: Integration In Our Nation
- Teaching Out of the Dust: Art Imitates Life
- Teaching The View from Saturday: Create Your Own Knowledge Bowl
- Teaching When You Reach Me: Mysteries of Science
- Using and Citing Online Sources: In Plain Cite: How To Credit Others' Work
- Teaching Hatchet: Biology 101
- Teaching A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Nickeled & Dimed
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: Right Brain Versus Left Brain
- Online Research and Keyword Search Techniques: Key(word)s to Your Heart: Google Search Tips
- Teaching Farewell to Manzanar: Do You See What I See?
- Teaching The View from Saturday: Getting To Know a Turtle (Almost)
- Teaching American Born Chinese: Individual Identity
- Teaching A Little Princess: What Happens to Them?
- Internet Privacy and Security: Without A (Big) Trace: Managing Your Digital Footprint
- Teaching Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: The Rules of Flag Flying (You Read That Right)
- Teaching A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: How Different Was It Really?
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: The Quotable Mrs. Who
- Teaching Black Beauty: Writing a Didactic Story
- Online Community, Culture, and Citizenship: E-Organizing for A Better World: Internet Activism
- Online Research and Keyword Search Techniques: Research Basics: Where in the World (Wide Web) Is…?
- Teaching When You Reach Me: I'm Gonna Buy…