Essential Standards (Click each standard to open the corresponding Proficiency Scale)

ELA.8.1 (W 8.1): Students will write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

ELA.8.2 (W 8.2): Students will write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

ELA.8.3 (W 8.3): Students will write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

ELA.8.4 (W 8.7): Students can conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

ELA.8.5 (W 8.8): Students can gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

ELA.8.6 (RL/RI 8.1): Students can cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

ELA.8.7 (RI 8.2): Students will determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text.

ELA.8.8 (RL 8.2): Students will determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

ELA.8.9 (RI 8.3): Students can analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).

ELA.8.10 (RI 8.5): Students can analyze in detail the structure of a specific paragraph in a text, including the role of particular sentences in developing and refining a key concept.

ELA.8.11 (RI 8.8): Students will delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.

ELA.8.12 (RL/RI 8.10): By the end of the year, students can read and comprehend literary nonfiction and fiction at the high end of the grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.