Grade 8

Word Relationship Meaning

Craft and Structure

Key Ideas and Evidence

Communication and Collaboration

Compose and Publish

Grammar and Usage

Identify a known root as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word with the same root (addition, additional). 

Determine the meaning of a word when an affix is added to the root of a word. 

Analyze and trace how plot structure impacts literary elements. 

Analyze how point of view affects literary elements. 

Analyze how story elements compare across various mediums. 

Analyze the meaning of words in a text including figurative and connotative meaning, and analyze the impact on meaning tone, analogies and allusions to other texts. 

Identify literary elements and explain their effect on the text.  

Analyze how two authors present their point of view on the same theme, topic or event with conflicting evidence. 

Determine common themes across texts and analyze development over the texts, including the effect of story elements. 

Evaluate the advantages and the disadvantages of the elements that contribute to the meaning and tone of an idea. 

Cite textual evidence that supports both an analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferences drawn from the text. 

Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions and carry out assigned roles. 

Actively participate in debate and argumentative process.  

Collaborate w/peers in a peer review process. 

Implement presentation skills (eye contact, gestures, and appropriate voice) without visual cues. 

Compose and publish informative and explanatory texts on a specific topic to convey ideas, concepts, and information in an organized manner. 

Write about a variety of literary genres using a student-generated thesis statement, analytical claims about the literature, and specific evidence from the text. 

Compose and publish a research essay that cites specific evidence from a variety of primary and secondary sources to support a student-generated thesis statement. 

Compose an original thesis statement for the argument for a variety of purposes. 

Utilize digital tools to produce and publish writing in collaboration with peers.

Compose verbals (such as gerunds or participles.) 

Form and use verbs in active and passive voice.

Continue identification and use of main parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions). 

Recognize and apply the normative and objective pronoun case and recognize and correct vague pronouns.

Identify and accurately choose the correct function of an adjective or an adverb. 

Choose among simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to signal differing relationships among ideas. 

Demonstrate the use of commas correctly in a variety of sentence structures and avoiding comma splices.