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Standard 1 : Key Ideas and DetailsArchived
Cluster Standards
This cluster includes the following benchmarks.
Visit the specific benchmark webpage to find related instructional resources.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.1 : Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.2 : 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.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.3 : Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
Cluster Information
Number:
LAFS.8.RL.1
Title:
Key Ideas and Details
Type:
Cluster
Subject:
English Language Arts - Archived
Grade:
8
Strand
Reading Standards for Literature
Cluster Access Points
This cluster includes the following Access Points.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.1a : Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.1b : Use two or more pieces of evidence to support inferences, conclusions or summaries of text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.1c :
Determine which piece(s) of evidence provides the strongest support for inferences, conclusions, or summaries of text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.2a : Determine the theme or central idea of a text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.2b : Analyze the development of the theme or central idea over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting and plot.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.2c : Provide/create an objective summary of a text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.3a : Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character or provoke a decision.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.3b : Identify the use of literary techniques within a text.
- LAFS.8.RL.1.AP.3c : Explain how the use of literary techniques within a text advances the plot or reveals aspects of a character.
Cluster Resources
Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
Original Student Tutorials
- How Dialogue, Thoughts, and Events Reveal Character in Ender’s Game -- Part Two: Learn more about how dialogue, a character’s thoughts, and key events can reveal aspects of a character as you read excerpts from the exciting science fiction novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. As you learn more about Ender, the main character, you’ll piece together information about the world in which he lives and his unique situation given the demands of his environment.
This interactive tutorial is Part Two of a two-part series. Make sure to complete Part One first! Click HERE to launch Part One.
- How Dialogue, Thoughts, and Events Reveal Character in Ender’s Game -- Part One: Learn how dialogue, a character’s thoughts, and key events can reveal aspects of a character as you read excerpts from the exciting science fiction novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. As you learn more about Ender, the main character, you’ll piece together information about the world in which he lives and his unique situation given the demands of his environment.
This interactive tutorial is Part One of a two-part series. Make sure to complete both parts! Click HERE to launch Part Two.
- How a Character Is Developed in a Diary: Explore excerpts from the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian written by Sherman Alexie. In this interactive tutorial, you'll learn about how a character is developed through a novel written as a diary. You'll examine how the author carefully reveals the history, thoughts, feelings, and perspective of the main character.
- Its all about Mood: Bradbury's "Zero Hour": Learn how authors create mood in a story through this interactive tutorial. You'll read a science fiction short story by author Ray Bradbury and analyze how he uses images, sound, dialogue, setting, and characters' actions to create different moods. This tutorial is Part One in a two-part series. In Part Two, you'll use Bradbury's story to help you create a Found Poem that conveys multiple moods.
When you've completed Part One, click HERE to launch Part Two.
- To Change a Heart: The Transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge: Analyze the interaction between characters and specific events to help reveal aspects of the infamous Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll examine how specific character interactions and plot events help provoke Scrooge to make a decision about the way he lives his life.
- Make a Wish: Theme in "The Monkey's Paw": Learn to identify and analyze the development of theme in this interactive tutorial. We'll read excerpts from "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs and examine how several different themes are developed throughout the text. We'll explore how each theme is conveyed in the story as the plot unfolds.
- Exploring Texts: Learn how to make inferences using the novel Hoot in this interactive tutorial. You'll learn how to identify both explicit and implicit information in the story to make inferences about characters and events.
Lesson Plans
- Where Should We Move? STEM Lesson Plan: Students will collect data to identify planet composition, average temperature, and the distance of some planets within the Milky Way Galaxy from the Sun. Students will complete two-way tables to make comparisons. Students will then analyze and interpret their data. Students will make inferences and justify their reasoning.
- Bringing Characters to Life: Characterization in The Illustrated Man: In this lesson, students will study the prologue of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. They'll examine how the author reveals aspects of a character through the use of direct and indirect characterization. They'll also make inferences about a character based on the characterization and text evidence provided. Further, they'll analyze how characterization connects to the specific setting and events within the prologue. At the end of the lesson, students will create a detailed character sketch based on direct and indirect characterization as well as inferences made when reading the text.
- It's a Lovely Home, But...Using Multiple Texts to Aid in Decision Making: In this lesson, students will learn about a subject as they read and analyze multiple text types before writing a business letter explaining a decision they will be asked to make. This lesson incorporates poetry, authentic non-fiction, photography, and writing.
- Rain in Summer: What a Bummer, Or Is It?: In this lesson, students will analyze the symbols and imagery present in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Rain in Summer" to determine its meaning. Formative assessment checks are included as student handouts with text-based questions and charts. Students will also write a short essay as a summative assessment in which they will develop a claim about the poem's meaning, providing text-based examples as support.
- Why Do We Remember Revere? Paul Revere's Ride in History and Literature: Virtually all students, at one point or another in their schooling, are exposed to Longfellow's ballad, "Paul Revere's Ride". How accurate is it? Is it responsible for Revere's ride achieving such iconic status? In this lesson from EDSITEment!, a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities, students will think about the answers to these and other questions as they read primary and secondhand accounts of events during the American Revolution.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: "The Monkey's Paw": Students will read the short story "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, answer text-dependent questions, and examine a theme of the story, "Be careful what you wish for." In the summative assessment students will write their own narrative that shares the same theme.
- Pygmalion: A Mythological Inspiration: Students will read Thomas Bulfinch's Pygmalion to answer text-dependent questions, work with vocabulary from the text, and compare the characterization of the two renditions of the myth. Students will also read an abridged excerpt from Act II of George Bernard Shaw's award-winning play, Pygmalion. Students will compare and contrast key characters and their traits from both texts. As a culminating activity, students will create their own narrative version of the Pygmalion myth.
- Close Reading of Echo and Narcissus: In this lesson, students will conduct three close readings of the highly entertaining myth "Echo and Narcissus" as retold by Thomas Bulfinch. Through these readings, students will answer text-dependent questions about the myth, work to determine the meanings of selected vocabulary and sort them into different categories, analyze character motivation, and determine the settings used in the story. For the end of lesson assessment, students will determine a theme for the myth and write about that theme in an extended response paragraph.
- Reading of a Greek Myth: Apollo and Daphne: Students will read the myth "Apollo and Daphne" as told by Thomas Bulfinch and analyze lines in the story that propel the action, reveal details about a character, or provoke a decision. Students will work in groups to paraphrase text to create a short dramatization of an assigned section of the myth.
- Action is Character/Exploring Character Traits with Adjectives: This lesson allows students to explore characters and their traits through a series of exercises using text evidence. Both printed materials and online organizers are provided. The final culminating activity asks students to "become" a character and describe himself/herself as well as describing other characters. Students then guess which character is being described.
- Knowledge or Instinct? Jack London's "To Build a Fire": A concise lesson plan with a variety of visual links and engaging before, during, and after reading activities.
- Florida: Feast of Connotations:
In this lesson, students will read the poem "Florida" by Elizabeth Bishop and code the text for positive and negative descriptions of Florida. Students will then explain in writing how connotation and figurative language contribute to the poet's description of Florida.
- Figurative Language in Macavity: In this lesson students will use T.S. Eliot's poem, “Macavity," to analyze the power of word choice and figurative language devices in creating coherent and purposefully written descriptions. They will cite text evidence to show how specific lines of the poem impact and drive the description of the subject of the poem, who happens to be a cat. They will write their own narrative using figurative language to describe an animal.
- To the Heart of Human Expression: Form and Theme in Poetry (Part 2): This is part two in a two-part series using Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 71." In this lesson, students will to identify and explain theme in poetry and write a short response.
- Charge of the Light Brigade: Can a Poem Tell a Story?: Students will be studying the narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and discussing how a "poem can tell a story." Students will focus upon citing evidence to support meaning found in the poem and then using those inferences to complete a comparison/contrast essay. Part of this study will include watching a 4 minute clip from the movie The Blind Side in which Tim McGraw's character explains the meaning of the poem in terms of a football game between rivals LSU and Ole Miss. Students will be asked to compare and contrast the poem's meaning in terms of battle in war and battle on the football field, determine how these two situations are similar and different, and finally be asked to explain if the football analogy was helpful in aiding the understanding of the story the poem tells.
- The Paths We Take: A Poetic Comparison: Students will study two poems in this lesson: Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Dale Wimbrow's "The Guy in the Glass." Students will identify and explain the use of metaphor in each poem, and they will also examine the imagery and personification used in each one. Students will also determine a theme of each poem and explain the similarities and differences in their related themes.
- Poetry and Meaning: "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" : In this lesson, students will study the poem "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" by Vachel Lindsay. Students will identify the examples of imagery within the poem and determine how the use of imagery contributes to the poem's meaning. Students will also practice making connections between the poem and its background information (President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War) as well as its historical context (World War I). During the lesson, students will also practice determining the meaning of unfamiliar words in the poem.
Teaching Idea
- Teaching Tolerance: Maya Angelou: This resource from Teaching Tolerance focuses on Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise." It begins with a discussion of figurative language and the power of words and moves into a discussion of overcoming hardships.
Tutorial
- Character Change: The Diary of Anne Frank: In this tutorial from PBS, students will explore what Anne Frank's writing and a video dramatization of her diary reveal about her character and how it changed while she was in hiding. They will develop their literacy skills as they explore how her character changes. During this process, they will also read informational text, learn and practice vocabulary words, and explore content through videos and interactive activities.
Unit/Lesson Sequences
- Freak the Mighty: Heroes Come in All Sizes: Freak the Mighty is the story of a friendship between Max, who is big for his age and has learning disabilities, and Kevin, who is a genius, but is short and unable to walk on his own. In this unit, students explore how expectations for students with disabilities are influenced by appearances, behaviors, and stereotypes as they cite textual evidence that supports an analysis of what the text says, determine/analyze the text's theme, and engage effectively in collaborative small-group discussions.
- Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe: "Explore reading strategies using the think-aloud process as students investigate connections between the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe. The unit, which begins with an in-depth exploration of "The Raven," then moves students from a full-class reading of the poem to small-group readings of Poe's short stories ("The Black Cat," "Hop-Frog," "Masque of the Red Death," and "The Fall of the House of Usher"). The unit concludes with individual projects that explore the readings in more detail. Students have the opportunity to choose among the following [three] activities: write a narrative in Poe's style; design a sales brochure for the House of Usher; ...or investigate the author further by exploring biographical and background information in more detail. The lesson includes options for both students who need direct instruction and those who can explore with less structure."