In this unit, students will examine the global topic of refugees.  The students will use nonfiction articles that provide students a background knowledge of the topic.  The articles will be the resources used to support learning of nonfiction VDOE Grade 8 standards. Students will apply comprehension skills daily throughout the unit of study.   The acquired background knowledge will support the second half of the unit as students will take part in a novel study using Refugee.   The students will show mastery by completing a persuasive writing performance based assessment. 

In this lesson, the art of blackout poetry is used to demonstrate how word choice estabishes an author's tone. Blackout poetry is a creative way for students to take a selected work and change the tone by selecting and pulling specific words from the text. Students see how choosing words and manipulating text impacts the tone and can change the meaning of a text.