8th Grade Oral Communication Homework

This resource should be used with Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Tell-Tale Heart. With this activity, students will read the M'Naghten rule of 1843 and decide whether or not they believe the main character of The Tell-Tale Heart would be found legally sane or insane. This resource includes space for students to collect textual evidence to support their answer, space for students to write other open-ended questions for discussion, and a discussion grading rubric.

I used this activity with my 8th grade students, and they absolutely loved it. They found great evidence to back up their explanations, and gained a deeper understanding of the short story and the M'Naghten rule. We used this resource in a socratic seminar formatted discussion, and they had enough to say about the main character and the M'Naghten rule that the majority of our 55 minute class period was covered.