This lesson plan outlines a 5-day unit for 8th grade English students focusing on communication skills related to the media. Over the course of the unit, students will analyze interviews from different media sources, conduct their own celebrity interviews, identify differences in language used across media, read and analyze newspaper articles on celebrities, and practice editing writing for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation and structure. The goal is for students to gain experience communicating through different media and improve their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.

2. Students will be able to choose vocabulary and tone appropriate to the audience, topic, and purpose.

3. Students will be able to use context, structure, and connotations to determine meaning of words and phrases.

4. Students will be able to draw on background knowledge and knowledge of text structure to understand selections, read and follow instructions to complete an assigned task, summarize a text and draw conclusions based on explicit and implied information.

9. Correcting grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure and paragraphing mistakes in a text.Materials Overhead projector, transparencies, newspaper articles, notebooks TEACHING PHASE Warm-Up Activity: The teacher presents a newspaper article in the overhead projector and calls students’ attention to capitalization, punctuation, sentence structure and paragraphing. Transition: Students try to infer rules from the examples marked in the transparency. Activity: Each student gets a newspaper or magazine article and corrects the mistakes as regards capitalization, punctuation; spelling, sentence structure and paragraphing that appear in the text. Differentiating instruction Starting up: Students will identify the mistakes and mark them in the text (groupwork) Beginning: Students will suggest possible correct options for the mistakes found in the text (pairwork) Developing: Students will write the correct version of the text without the mistakes given in the original copy. Expanding: Students will write a newspaper/magazine article about a celebrity they choose (individual work) Bridging: Students will write a newspaper/magazine article about a celebrity they choose. When they finish, students exchange articles and edit their peer’s work (individual work) Assessment Students will hand in their class work before the lesson is over. Closure Students will share the class which part of the unit they enjoy the most and why. Homework Students will write a summary of the text they worked with in class: just a few lines that show the main idea.