Many books lend themselves to cooking and food as hands-on activities for further exploration. Some books are set in a time period or a location that offers opportunities for this type of activity. Having each student bring in a food to share based on their reading is one idea. If your entire class is reading the same book, you could hold a class-wide discussion about how food played a roll in the book and then bring in some foods as examples.
Many eighth grade language arts classes read The Diary of Anne Frank. If you have this on your lesson plan schedule, consider a social experiment to help students more fully understand the events happening during the time the story was written. One idea is to put pieces of yarn or ribbon in a bowl for students to pick from. Half of the ribbon should be green and the other half divided between silver and gold. Students who pick the green can speak as they wish. Silver can speak when spoken to by green, and gold can only speak with the permission of green. This experiment will give students an idea of how uncomfortable and unfair arbitrary rules are.
When you are working on a folk story lesson with your eighth graders, work in some hands-on lessons in the art of storytelling. Voice inflection, eye contact, pacing and engaging an audience are all important storytelling skills. At the end of this lesson, students can host a storytelling festival for students at a nearby elementary school. Folk stories are particularly good for this type of lesson because they had their start in the oral tradition of storytelling.
Set up a writing workshop in your class by filling an index card box with "what if?" cards. Each index card should hold a question designed to encourage students to think creatively for writing assignments, such as "What if everyone slept during the day and was up all night?" or "What if people could breathe under water?" The questions can range from the simple to the outrageous. Students can work with you to fill this card box, which may help them feel enthusiastic about using it. Writing a "what if?" paper might become extra credit or an activity a student can work on in spare time.