Common Core ELA8th GradeReading: Literature

RL.8.5: Compare How Two Texts Are Built

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

The Official Wording

Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 8, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.8.5 Means in Plain English

Eighth graders set two texts side by side and compare how each is built, then explain what the build does to meaning and style. A poem that keeps circling back to one line feels stuck. A story told backward walks away from the same loss.

In 7th grade (RL.7.5) students analyzed how one drama’s or poem’s form, like a soliloquy or sonnet, adds to its meaning. Eighth grade compares structures across texts. In grades 9 and 10 (RL.9-10.5) students study how ordering events and handling time create tension or surprise.

RL.8.5 I Can Statements

I can describe how each of two texts is organized.
I can explain what a structure adds to a text’s meaning.
I can compare how two structures change the style of each text.

RL.8.5 Worked Example

Two short texts about losing a grandmother’s house: a poem built on a refrain and a story told in reverse.

Read the Story

Poem A, “The Sale”: The house is sold. The keys are on the stair. / We pack the cups, the clock, the kitchen chair.We do not talk. We tape the boxes square. / The house is sold. The keys are on the stair.Story B, “Backward”: Today the moving van pulled away from Gran’s house. Yesterday we wrapped her plates in newspaper.Last spring Gran called me by my mother’s name. Ten years ago, at this counter, she taught me to make biscuits, her hands over mine.

A short passage written for this page.

Question: Both texts are about losing Gran’s house. How does each one’s structure shape its meaning and style?

Not Yet“Poem A rhymes and repeats a line, and Story B goes backward in time. They are both about moving.”Both labels are accurate, but the answer never says what either structure does. A comparison of structure has to reach meaning and style.

Meets the Standard“Poem A is a closed circle. It opens and ends on ‘The house is sold. The keys are on the stair,’ so the loss keeps coming back like a fact the speaker can’t get past, and short, flat sentences like ‘We do not talk’ make the style numb and controlled. Story B runs the other way, from ‘Today the moving van pulled away’ back to ‘Ten years ago,’ so it walks away from the loss and ends on ‘her hands over mine,’ with Gran as she was before she forgot. The poem stays stuck in the loss. The story escapes into memory.”It names each structure, quotes where it shows, says what each does to meaning and style, and closes on a direct contrast between the two.

Question Stems to Use

How is each text organized: by time, by repetition, by contrast?Where does each text begin and end, and why there?What does the repeated line do each time it returns?How would the second text feel told in order?Which structure fits its text’s meaning better, and why?

Common Mistakes with RL.8.5

Labeling structures without explaining them

“Poem A has a refrain. Story B is in reverse order.”

Try this: Require a “so” after every structural label, as in “The poem repeats its first line, so…”, and stop students who end at the label.

Two separate analyses, no comparison

A paragraph on the poem, a paragraph on the story, and no sentence that connects them

Try this: Have students write the final sentence first: one line that sets the two structures against each other, then build the paragraphs toward it.

Comparing content instead of form

“Both are about Gran, but only the story mentions biscuits.”

Try this: Point students to how each text is arranged, its order, repetition and line length, before they say anything about what it contains.

Where RL.8.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.7.5Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form, like a soliloquy or sonnet, contributes to its meaning.

AlongsideRI.8.5Analyze the job each sentence does in building a key idea in a paragraph.W.8.3Choose a structure for their own narratives, including shifts in time.

Comes NextRL.9-10.5Analyze how structure, the order of events and the handling of time create mystery, tension or surprise.

Practice RL.8.5

Quick Check

Which line does Poem A begin and end with?
“The house is sold. The keys are on the stair.”
In what order does Story B tell its events?
Backward, from today’s moving van to a memory from ten years ago.
What does Story B reveal about Gran that Poem A never mentions?
Last spring she called the narrator by the narrator’s mother’s name, a sign she was losing her memory.

RL.8.5: Other Names

RL.8.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.5