8th Grade English Language Arts

Students will actively listen using agreed-upon discussion rules and recognize verbal and nonverbal cues.

Students will actively listen to interpret a speaker’s verbal and nonverbal messages and ask questions to clarify the speaker’s purpose.

Students will work effectively and respectfully in diverse groups by sharing responsibility for collaborative work and recognizing individual contributions made by each group member.

Students will engage in collaborative discussions about what they are reading and writing, expressing their own ideas clearly in pairs, diverse groups, and whole-class settings.

Students will give formal and informal presentations in a group or individually, organizing information and determining content for the audience, speaking audibly and clearly in coherent sentences.

Students will determine the author’s purpose and draw conclusions to determine if the author’s purpose was achieved.

Students will determine whether a grade-level literary text is narrated in first- or third-person point of view and describe its effect.

Students will determine how literary elements contribute to the meaning of a literary text: setting, plot, characters, characterization, conflict, theme.

Students will determine how literary devices contribute to the meaning of a text: imagery, metaphor, idiom, personification, hyperbole, simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia.

Students will distinguish fact from opinion in an informational text and explain how reasons and facts support specific points.

Students will compose narratives reflecting real or imagined experiences that include plots with a climax and resolution, developed characters who overcome conflicts and use dialogue, a consistent point of view, unfolding in chronological sequence, and using sentence variety, sensory details, and vivid language to create interest.

Students will compose informative essays that introduce and develop a topic, incorporate evidence, maintain an organized structure with transitional words and phrases, and use sentence variety and word choice to create interest.

Students will write opinion essays that introduce a topic and state a clear opinion, incorporate relevant, text-based evidence to support the opinion, use sentence variety and word choice to create interest, and organize writing in a logical sequence with transitional words and phrases.

Students will analyze the relationships among synonyms, antonyms, and analogies.

Students will use context clues to clarify the meaning of words.

Students will use word parts to define and determine the meaning of new words.

Students will use a dictionary, glossary, or thesaurus to determine or clarify the meanings, syllabication, pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms, and parts of speech of words.

Students will use grade-level vocabulary in writing to clearly communicate ideas.

Students will use precise and vivid vocabulary in writing for the intended mode and effect on the audience.

Students will recognize active and passive voice and misplaced and dangling modifiers in sentences.

Students will recognize and explain the impact on meaning of parts of speech in sentences: nouns, verbals, cumulative and coordinate adjectives, vague pronouns, singular they/them/their, coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions, adverbs, interjections.

Students will compose simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to add clarity and variety in their writing.

Students will create clarity and/or add variety to their writing with nouns, verbs, verbals, adjectives, prepositions, adverbs, pronouns, and conjunctions.

Students will recognize and correct the following: misplaced and dangling modifiers, vague pronouns, and second person point of view in formal writing.

Students will write using correct capitalization mechanics.

Students will write using correct end mark mechanics.

Students will write using correct apostrophe mechanics.

Students will use commas to separate coordinate adjectives.

Students will use a colon to introduce a quotation from a source.

Students will write using correct quotation marks mechanics.

Students will use underlining or italics to indicate titles of works, thoughts in narratives, and words in a foreign language.

Students will use a semicolon to punctuate compound and compound-complex sentences.

Students will use their own viable research questions to gather information about a topic.

Students will record and organize information from various primary and secondary sources.

Students will determine the relevance and reliability of the information gathered.

Students will formulate a viable research question.

Students will organize information found during research, following a modified citation style (i.e., author, title, publication date).

Students will write informative texts independently for short timeframes (e.g., a single sitting or a day or two) that organize related information logically and convey key details, quotations, or other relevant information from multiple sources.

Students will analyze the techniques used in a variety of multimodal content and determine how they contribute to meaning.

Students will create multimodal content that effectively communicates ideas for an intended audience.

Students will select texts for academic and personal purposes and read independently for extended periods of time.

Students will write independently using print, cursive, and/or typing for various lengths of time, intentionally selecting and combining modes and genres to suit their audiences and purposes.