Grade 8 & 9

STEP 1: Arrange students into groups of 4-6.

STEP 2: Hand out (print may be easier than digital) this modified D&D Character Sheet. Students will build their adventure party together within their groups. Each student has their own character, but these characters will be working together.

STEP 3: Guide students through building their LEVEL 1 (yes, just like grade 8) characters with the D&D Character GUIDE. 

• USE THE SPELLS AND SKILLS RECOMMENDED IN THE RULES

STEP 4: This Character Backstory & Party Collab document has a section for students to develop independently and a section to develop collaboratively with their adventure party.

I use an adventure I paid for and cannot legally reproduce it here. Below are some options to consider:

1) Purchase the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide for access to a some sample adventures of various levels.

2) Web search free D&D adventures of whatever level you need. There are LOADS. Single-level adventures are commonly referred to as One-Shots. Winghorn Press, for example, has several free one-shot adventures.

3) Ask AI (Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.) to make you an adventure at whatever level you need! You can even ask it to create scripts for the DM and guidelines for beginner DM and players.

These are the OFFICIAL FREE D&D RULES which, in reality, can be bent or broken as much as students want. If a student has an idea for their character to perform a certain task, just ask them if their character would realistically be ABLE to do that, if the group is OK with that happening in their fictional world, and what difficulty class you might apply to that task (see below). 

This DIFFICULTY CLASS EXAMPLES and this WHAT ARE THE SIX ABILITIES poster hang on my walls to help students keep things simple and flowing. 

Dice can be found free online. Type "dice" into your Google search bar.

The students will have an easier time building their own level 3 adventure if YOU serve as Dungeon Master (DM) for level 1 first and they take turns serving as DM for a provided level 2 adventure. 

Provide students the Level 3 Adventure Building Guide.

After each chapter, I have my students complete two documents: 

1. Sentence Builder Worksheet as their warmup. All content should come from the adventure they JUST played.

2. D&D Paragraph Writing Organizer should be written in a narrative format. Exemplars and a checklist are provided and the work is chunked. Guide this as you deem best. 

Just like with the grade 7 students, I have the grade 8 students convert their Paragraph Writing Organizers into a short story.

After, the Campaign Codex 8 is their final assignment to wrap up this unit.

After each chapter, I have my students complete two documents: 

1. Sentence Builder Worksheet as their warmup. All content should come from the adventure they JUST played.

2. D&D Paragraph Writing Organizer should be written in a narrative format. Exemplars and a checklist are provided and the work is chunked. Guide this as you deem best. 

The grade 9 students write a retirement memoire from the perspective of their D&D character (coming soon).

After, the Campaign Codex 9 is their final assignment to wrap up this unit.