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Massachusetts Standards

Massachusetts 8th Grade ELA Standards

All 41 Massachusetts English language arts standards for 8th grade, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's document, linked at the end of this page.

41 standards

Reading Standards for Literature

9 standards
RL.8.1
Choose the evidence that best supports your analysis of what a story states and what you infer from it, quoting or paraphrasing as fits.
RL.8.2
Identify a theme or central idea, trace how it develops through the characters, setting, and plot, and write an objective summary.
RL.8.3
Analyze how specific lines of dialogue or events in a story, poem, or play move the action forward, reveal a character, or prompt a decision.
RL.8.4
Work out figurative and connotative meanings, and analyze how word choices, including allusion and irony, shape the meaning, tone, and mood of a literary text.
RL.8.5
Compare and contrast how two or more texts are built, analyzing how each one's structure shapes its meaning and style.
RL.8.6
Analyze how gaps between what characters know and what readers know, like dramatic irony, build suspense or humor.
RL.8.7
Analyze how closely an audio, film, or stage version of a story, play, or poem follows the original, judging the choices of the director or actors.
RL.8.9
Show how a modern novel reuses a theme, plot pattern or character type from a myth, folk tale or the Bible, and how it makes it new.
Common Core RL.8.9
RL.8.10
Read grade 8 level literature or harder on your own and understand it well, like novels, plays, and poems from many genres, cultures, and perspectives.

Reading Standards for Informational Text

10 standards
RI.8.1
Choose the evidence that best supports your analysis of a nonfiction text's direct statements and your inferences, quoted or paraphrased.
RI.8.2
Identify a nonfiction text's central idea or ideas, analyze how they develop alongside supporting ideas, and write an objective summary.
RI.8.3
Explain how a nonfiction writer connects people, ideas or events or sets them apart, say by comparing them or sorting them into groups.
Common Core RI.8.3
RI.8.4
Work out figurative, connotative, and technical meanings in nonfiction, and analyze how word choices, including analogies and allusions, affect meaning and tone.
RI.8.5
Analyze in detail how specific sentences, paragraphs, and text features like headings help develop and sharpen a key concept in a text.
RI.8.6
Find the author's point of view or purpose, and explain how the author deals with evidence and viewpoints that cut against it.
Common Core RI.8.6
RI.8.7
Weigh the pros and cons of presenting a topic in print, in a video or on a web page with mixed media.
Common Core RI.8.7
RI.8.8
Lay out a text's argument and its claims, judge whether the reasoning holds and the evidence is enough, and spot evidence that is off topic.
Common Core RI.8.8
RI.8.9
Compare two or more texts that disagree about the same topic and pinpoint where they differ on facts or on how to read the facts.
Common Core RI.8.9
RI.8.10
Read grade 8 level literary nonfiction or harder independently and with strong understanding, like speeches and memoirs from many cultures and perspectives.

Writing Standards

10 standards
W.8.1
Write arguments, like essays or letters to the editor, that state a claim, set it apart from opposing claims, back it with logic and credible sources, and conclude.
W.8.2
Write informative essays, reports, or feature articles that preview the topic, group ideas into broader categories, use varied transitions and graphics, and conclude.
W.8.3
Write narratives with a clear point of view, ordered events, dialogue, pacing, and reflection, and word choices that set a tone like humorous or serious.
W.8.4
Match how a piece of writing is developed, organized and styled to its task, its purpose and the people who will read it.
Common Core W.6.4
W.8.5
Plan, revise, edit, rewrite, or rethink a draft with its purpose and audience in mind, using correct grade 8 conventions and accurate, well-suited vocabulary.
W.8.6
Use technology and online platforms to publish writing, show clearly and efficiently how information and ideas relate, and collaborate with others.
W.8.7
Do short and extended research projects on a question, including one you came up with, using several sources and new focused questions that open more paths.
W.8.8
Find research in print and digital sources with good search terms, check each source's credibility and accuracy, and cite quotes or paraphrases in a standard format.
W.8.9
Draw on evidence from literature or nonfiction in your writing to support analysis, interpretation, reflection, and research, using grade 8 reading skills.
W.8.10
Write regularly, from a report built over several days to a journal entry finished in one class, for different subjects, purposes and readers.
Common Core W.3.10

Speaking and Listening Standards

6 standards
SL.8.1
Come prepared to a discussion with evidence, follow the group's rules and roles, link speakers' ideas with questions, and adjust your view when the evidence warrants.
Common Core SL.8.1
SL.8.2
Analyze why information is presented in a chart, video or speech, and judge the social, commercial or political motive behind it.
Common Core SL.8.2
SL.8.3
Break down a speaker's argument, judge whether the reasoning holds and the evidence is enough, and catch evidence that is beside the point.
Common Core SL.8.3
SL.8.4
Deliver claims and findings with focus, highlighting key points through solid evidence, valid reasoning, and well-picked details, with good eye contact, volume, and pronunciation.
SL.8.5
Weave multimedia and visual displays into presentations so information is clearer, claims and evidence hit harder, and listeners stay interested.
SL.8.6
Change your speaking style for different situations and tasks, using formal English skillfully when it is expected, like in a debate or interview.

Language Standards

6 standards
L.8.1
Use correct grammar, like making pronouns agree with antecedents in all sentence types and using active and passive voice and moods such as conditional and subjunctive.
L.8.2
Capitalize the first word of a sentence and the word I, name the period and question mark, and spell simple words the way they sound, like kat for cat.
Common Core L.K.2
L.8.3
Notice the difference between formal and casual English, like Good morning, Mrs. Lee versus Hey, and choose which fits the moment.
Common Core L.2.3
L.8.4
Work out an unfamiliar 8th-grade word from context, from Greek and Latin roots like precede and recede, or from a dictionary, then check the guess.
Common Core L.8.4
L.8.5
Explain a nonliteral phrase like take steps, name someone who is friendly to link a word to real life, and rank knew, believed and suspected by how sure they are.
Common Core L.3.5
L.8.6
Learn and accurately use grade 8 academic and subject words, and look up unfamiliar words on your own to keep expanding your vocabulary.

The official Massachusetts documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Massachusetts's standards, not the official wording, which Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.