The best practical introduction I've seen that provides a great way into playing, for everyone - bar none - is Gigajam's eLearning resource. Well structured, on-line assessment, personalised and progressive learning, stupidly cheap (IMHO) so I'd get in quickly!
http://www.gigajam.com

Why not try The Show by Lenka? Chords/lyrics/video on Fiona's page on this site.

Also Waving Flag by K'Naan (see my latest blog entry "Rap and hip hop – exploding some myths" for more details) you might not know this song yet - but you will do soon enough. It has been selected as the Official Song for World Cup 2010 - which will give it immediate classroom cred I guess.....

I echo Mr Fazakerley's suggestion.
Another effective song to look at (as it is still popular today, and popular with football fans) is 'Ring of Fire' by Johnny Cash. Its three chords (G, C and D) with a riff that can be played on various instruments.

I'm waiting for the man' by Velvet Underground.

'Take me to the river' springs to mind, the Talking Heads version as they are particular favourites of mine. Good riff. Three chords, I think but you could probably stick one chord even for a simplified version.

I have done some similar work to this, and found that The Saturday's version of Depeche Mode's 'Just Can't Get Enough' really grabs the students' attention, and its a really simple song, with memorable riff


You might the chords/music on www.ultimate-guitar.com Good luck! :)

Would recommend three chords (so that the song resolves itself). Newbies will struggle with barre chords, so best to avoid those for now. (Status Quo made a career from 3 chords !!)
Seriously though, try G/C/D.. nice easy chords with some open strings to give a 'full' sound and all around the first 3 frets - avoiding intonation problems higher up the fretboard on cheaper 'student' guitars. Don't know what type of guitars you have at your school or whether your Yr 8s will bring their own but for complete beginners always try 'Spanish' / classical guitars. They have wider fingerboards and nylon strings. This make fretting the strings a lot kinder on the finger-ends and you get more room on the fretboard for inexperienced (albeit smaller) hands.
Eleanor Rigby is a little tricky on the vocals although the Em/C structure is simple.......
The trouble with up-to-date stuff that Yr8s like is that it's mostly unplayable on guitar !!

Try www.chordie.com - this site has sqillions of songs complete with tabs and chord windows and you can print them down as well as transpose the key on-screen.

Bad Moon Rising - three chords, or just work through a 12 bar blues in A. Status Quo's Sweet Caroline works well too.

Thanks for that - they'd love to do something from a film :0) I've also been recommended 'Be the one' by the TingTings so am going to check that out too.

I'd appreciate as many ideas as possible!

Thanks

If you're allowed to do copyright songs then "It's A Long Way To The Top" (AC/DC) from the film "School Of Rock" has 3 chords, with an easy riff to play along with singers as well (It uses A chord and an open strings chord).

If you could teach them the "power chord" then you can slide it to accompany lots of songs using guitar tab.
I had a class of primary children, some who did this chord and some did solos on top (with no singers).