Grade 8 ELA Washington standards Standards

Media Literacy and Critical Thinking

Research and Inquiry

Research and Media Literacy

Structure and Function of English

Knowledge of Language

Language

Voice

Public Speaking and Presentations

Collaboration

Discussion

Speaking, Listening, and Digital Forums

Share and Publish

Revise and Edit

Draft and Establish Voice

Plan and Generate Ideas

Writing Purposes and Products

Writing

Analyzing, Evaluating and Using Texts

Comprehending and Interpreting Texts

Text Features

Reading

Students identify and discuss when and why language is used differently according to the setting.

Compare and contrast the varieties of English used by different groups based on content, context, and media.

Describe the different uses of active and passive voice and in the conditional and subjunctive moods by different language communities to communicate emphasis, uncertainty, agreement, or disagreement.

Students read and recite grade-level speeches, poetry and prose orally with purpose, understanding, and accuracy.

Reflect the pauses and cadence expressed through punctuation.

Reflect shifts in voice and mood through intonation, cadence, and/ or gesture.

Students connect thoughts and ideas through discourse patterns, elaboration, reference, and grammar.

Communicate the relationship among ideas through syntax and punctuation.

Use punctuation to indicate a pause, break, or omission.

Students vary sentence patterns for meaning, clarity, and style in group and individual activities in the context of conversations and writing about experiences, events, and eighth grade content.

Form and use the active and passive voices.

Form and use verbs in the indicative, imperative, interrogative, conditional, and subjunctive moods.

Students demonstrate understanding of figurative language, explore word relationships and distinguish shades of meaning in the context of eighth grade conversations and reading about experiences, events, and ideas.

Use grade-appropriate Greek and Latin root words and affixes as clues to the meaning of an unknown word.

Distinguish among the use and definitions of related words that express ideas more or less precisely and concisely.

Recognize, interpret, and explain figures of speech in context.

Students demonstrate command of the English language to speak and write clearly, and to comprehend more fully when reading, listening, or viewing.

Students think critically about the effects, purposes, accuracy, logic, and fairness of media messages, the credibility of information sources, and how they will engage with media messages.

Students read self-selected texts.

Identify and select texts they want to read using various strategies.

Spend time accessing and reading a variety of texts.

Students know and use text features.

Describe how visual elements in a text represent, organize, and/or add meaning to the written text.

Recognize the text features of a range of genres.

Not in 8th.

Not in 8th.

Students comprehend and interpret texts using a variety of strategies.

Preview the text while reflecting on their purposes for reading.

Visualize to make sense of the text.

Make predictions and inferences and check them against textual evidence.

Maintain motivation and reconnect when the flow of reading is interrupted.

Explain what they understand from a story, event, idea, or argument, including how information, ideas, or elements of a story interact.

Students analyze texts.

Analyze the specific viewpoint or argument the author presents on a topic, event, experience, question, idea, or controversy.

Analyze the author’s use of analogies, allusions, and repetition of words or sounds.

Analyze how an author structures content to lead the reader through a story, experiences, ideas, information, or arguments.

Analyze how choices about language, organization, and visual elements advance the author’s purpose and fit within the genre, medium, or platform.

Compare and contrast similar content presented in different genres, mediums, and platforms.

Students evaluate a text.

Explain how well an element of a text effectively supports the reader to visualize and/or empathize.

Explain how well an element of a text is relevant to the student and/or the intended audience.

Explain how well an element of a text engages the reader or provokes thought, understanding, or action.

Students use texts they have read for purposes relevant to them.

Explore questions, issues, and skills relevant to their contexts using texts.

Develop their own ideas, perspectives, arguments, projects, and/or plans for action while reading, discussing, and writing about texts.

Identify a main idea or theme in a text related to their purpose/s for using a text and analyze its development over the course of the text.

Develop a summary or paraphrase, and/or select quotations related to their purpose/s in using a text.

Use and adapt choices made by authors and creators of multimodal texts as mentors for their own multimodal compositions. [See W8th.4b.]

Students introduce and attribute multiple pieces of textual evidence to support their analysis, evaluation, or use of a text.

Students ask different types of questions, refining and asking new questions as understanding of the topic evolves.

Students seek answers from information sources.

Generate ideas for how to start searching based on prior knowledge.

Select and access a variety of relevant print and digital information sources, including by navigating libraries.

Use digital tools effectively based on an understanding of the technologies that deliver results, adapting search terms as needed and using technology appropriately.

Identify people with relevant information to share.

Students gather relevant information using a variety of strategies.

Students synthesize new learning to use and/or share.

Students explain how personal perspectives and dispositions affect people’s reactions to media messages.

Explain how emotional responses to media messages affect reactions.

Identify how different criteria for determining what is true affect reactions to and interpretations of media messages.

Students explain the purposes of media messages and the techniques used to create them.

Determine whether the main purpose of a media message is to inform, persuade, provoke, sell, or entertain.

Describe the techniques, including appeals and integration of multimedia, used to achieve the media message’s purpose.

Students evaluate different parts of media messages when they’re looking for information that’s accurate, logical, and/or fair.

Determine whether components of a media message can be verified as true or false or need to be evaluated another way.

Check the accuracy of information that can be verified as true or false by comparing what multiple reliable sources say about it.

Determine whether the visual or audio components of a media message represent its subject accurately and/or fairly, taking into account how digital media can be manipulated.

Evaluate the logic of claims in media messages and the strength of evidence used to support them.

Students evaluate the credibility of information sources.

Identify those responsible for the content of an information source, including content generated by technology.

Determine whether those responsible for information sources have expertise about the topic.

Determine whether those responsible for information sources have reputations for conveying information fairly and accurately.

Determine whether those responsible for information sources exhibit a perspective relevant to the topic and, if so, to what extent that perspective has been affected by bias.

Students make informed choices about how they will engage with media messages based on their personal and community experiences, values, and goals.

Explain how media messages can have consequences for themselves and/or their communities.

Describe how technology helps determine how information spreads.

Distinguish between intentional and unintentional motivations for spreading different types of information.

Describe how people get their news and how this has changed over time.

Students read, comprehend, interpret, analyze, evaluate, use, and appreciate fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction from a broad range of genres, cultures, and media in the context of grade-level content to understand themselves, others, and the world.

Students ask a variety of questions, seek answers by appropriately using relevant tools and techniques, adjust their inquiry methods as needed, and use their learning.

Students listen thoughtfully, respond respectfully, and contribute meaningfully to well-reasoned exchanges.

Reflect on who is present in the conversation and how they relate to each other.

Establish expectations and roles within the community, changing them when needed.

Ask and answer questions that clarify or verify a speaker’s point or perspective.

Share their interpretation of others’ contributions to build common understanding.

Present and interpret textual evidence, research (see RML8.4), experience, and/or prior knowledge, attributing evidence and ideas.

Develop arguments and/or common understanding by connecting to prior statements and others’ contributions.

Summarize points of agreement and/or disagreement.

Challenge ideas and conclusions based on contradictory evidence or experience.

Analyze changes in opinion and understanding.

Give and respond to feedback about how others interpret communication and/or messages differently than the speaker intended.

Summarize conclusions, questions, and complications from the discussion.

Prepare for planned discussions by thinking, reading, and/or researching the topic.

Students collaborate effectively on projects and tasks.

Establish expectations and roles, changing them when needed.

Connect the project or prompt to their interests, perspectives, experiences, and/or community needs.

Determine the process or steps needed to complete the project.

Prepare for meetings by completing portions of the project as agreed.

Summarize progress made, identifying gaps and adjusting future goals as needed.

Students present reports, speeches, and creative work in a variety of genres such that listeners can empathize and/or follow the line of reasoning.

Identify topics from the situation, experience, imagination, reading, research (see RML8th.4), media, conversations, and/or products from W8th.1.

Develop content by considering what they want to communicate within the situation and the audience’s background knowledge and/or position.

Make strategic use of supporting images, media, and artifacts in presentations to clarify content and support the audience’s engagement with the presentation and material.

Students determine how to present themselves and their ideas.

Craft voice by building on strengths, experience, personality, and role within the community in which the discussion, speech, or presentation occurs.

Determine if and how to respond to others given the expectations of the community, their role, and how they wish to express themselves and their ideas.

Determine which language and/or languages support their purpose and voice.

Identify the benefits, drawbacks, and effects of anonymity and of various ways of expressing authenticity through digital forums and other media.

Determine how to present themselves and their ideas in digital forums given the potential impact on future goals and opportunities.

Students use voice, intonation, gesture, and pacing to illuminate the content and engage the audience and lead them through the speaker’s thinking.

Students comprehend, engage in, and learn from collaborative discussions, presentations and public speaking in a variety of genres in the context of grade-level content, in person and/or through digital forums.

Students compose to process and reflect, respond to reading and learning, explore and develop ideas, record observations, experiment with language, and make sense of the world, events, and experiences. [Not all products from W8th.1 must be taken through W8th.2 – W8th.10.]

Students share and publish compositions in person and/or on digital or non-digital platforms.

Determine where to publish after considering potential impacts of intended and unintended audiences and the permanence of digital platforms.

Students compose multimodal texts in a variety of genres across content areas to affect an audience’s ideas, understanding, perspectives, and/or actions.

Describe situations, experience, ideas, and imaginings, with sufficient details for the audience to activate the senses.

Explain their observations and analysis of texts, ideas, and the world.

Persuade others through arguments, evaluations, and other appeals.

Tell narratives of stories and events, using techniques and devices consistent with the genre.

Students manage and complete writing projects.

Analyze the prompt to determine the purpose of the project and how to meet it.

Connect the project to personal and/or community experiences, interests, perspectives, and/or needs.

Determine the process or steps and plan the time needed to complete the project.

Adjust to feedback and shifts in focus and timeline when needed.

Students generate and gather ideas and material, including appropriate use of technology.

Generate ideas for topics, genres, and material from experience, imagination, reading, research (see RML8th.4), media, conversations, the communicative situation, products from W8th.1, and/or desire to communicate with a variety of audiences.

Determine which features and conventions of genres and medias to follow, adapt, or combine from mentor texts.

Curate ideas and material, including findings from their research (see RML8th.4) and media, identifying when and how it’s fair to use the creative work of others.

Students draft content within the genre and purpose to develop ideas, engage the audience, and express voice.

Develop descriptions to activate and build on the audience´s prior learning and opinions, and to help the audience to imagine and empathize with the content.

Develop analysis of experience, events, information, ideas, and/or texts.

Draft claims and support them with relevant and credible evidence connected by sound and valid reasoning.

Develop appeals to emotion and reason.

Use evidence from texts to support analysis, reflection, or research.

Select and integrate images, charts, headings, and other text features as appropriate to the genre and useful to audience.

Attribute sources in ways consistent with the genre, using technology appropriately.

Students craft introductions and conclusions within genre and purpose to engage the audience, establish voice, and support content in the body of the text.

Students organize content, using and/or adapting the genre’s structure, to lead readers through the student’s thinking.

Students evaluate drafts.

Re-read to determine whether the draft says what they want it to say.

Re-read to identify differences between what they intend and what the audience would understand from the text itself.

Gather feedback and determine whether it supports their intentions and/or improves readers’ understanding.

Students revise and edit using a variety of strategies, including use of appropriate technology.

Use what they learned from re-reading and feedback to strengthen their compositions.

Edit for conventions and consistency of text features, including attributions. [See Language standards 1–8.]

Students compose multimodal texts in a variety of genres for a range of communicative situations in the context of grade-level content, in which the development, organization, and language use are appropriate to genre, task, purpose, and audience.