Search the California Content Standards

Standard:
Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position from that of others.

Standard:
Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Standard:
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Standard:
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.

Standard:
Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how setting shapes the characters or plot).

Standard:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama. (See grade 7 Language standards 4–6 for additional expectations.) CA

Standard:
Analyze how a drama’s or poem’s form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning.

Standard:
Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.

Standard:
Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening. a. Use verbs in the active and passive voice and in the conditional and subjunctive mood to achieve particular effects (e.g., emphasizing the actor or the action; expressing uncertainty or describing a state contrary to fact).

Standard:
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words or phrases based on grade 8 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. a. Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase. b. Use common, grade-appropriate Greek or Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word (e.g., precede, recede, secede). c. Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning or its part of speech or trace the etymology of words. CA d. Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary).