Alabama State Standards for Language Arts: Grade 8
AL.R. Reading - Students will:
R.1. Apply strategies, including making inferences to determine theme, confirming or refuting predictions, and using specific context clues, to comprehend eighth-grade recreational reading materials.
R.1.1. Applying self-monitoring strategies for text understanding
R.1.2. Distinguishing fact from fiction to enhance understanding
R.1.3. Determining sequence in recreational reading material
R.2. Evaluate the impact of setting, mood, and characterization on theme in specific literary selections.
R.2.1. Identifying components of plot
R.3. Distinguish among the subcategories of poetry, such as ballads, lyric poems, epics, haiku, and limericks, based on their characteristics.
R.3.1. Identifying rhythm and rhyme scheme
R.4. Apply strategies appropriate to type of reading material, including making inferences to determine bias or theme and using specific context clues, to comprehend eighth-grade informational and functional reading materials.
R.4.1. Applying self-monitoring strategies for text understanding
R.4.2. Comparing predicted with actual content in informational and functional reading materials
R.4.3. Distinguishing fact from opinion in informational reading materials
R.4.4. Confirming author's credentials
R.4.5. Determining sequence of steps, events, or information
AL.L. Literature - Students will:
L.5. Explain distinguishing characteristics of odes, ballads, epic poetry, historical documents, essays, letters to the editor, and editorials.
L.6. Analyze works of literature for character motivation, mood, tone, theme, similarities across texts, and literary devices.
AL.WL. Writing and Language - Students will:
WL.7. Compose a business letter, including heading, inside address, salutation, body, closing, and signature.
WL.8. Write in narrative, expository, and persuasive modes with attention to descriptive elements.
WL.9. Apply mechanics in writing, including punctuating titles using quotation marks, underlining, or italics and using semicolons, conjunctive adverbs, and commas to join two independent clauses or to correct run-on sentences.
WL.9.1. Demonstrating correct sentence structure by avoiding comma splices in writing
WL.9.2. Using commas to set off nonessential clauses and appositives in writing
WL.10. Use prepositional phrases and compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences to vary sentence structure.
WL.10.1. Using gerunds, infinitives, and participles in writing
WL.10.2. Recognizing active and passive voice in writing
WL.10.3. Applying subject-verb agreement rules with collective nouns, nouns compound in form but singular in meaning, compound subjects joined by correlative and coordinating conjunctions, and subjects plural in form but singular in meaning
WL.11. Write sentence patterns common to English construction.
WL.12. Identify the correct use of degrees of comparison, adjectives and adverb forms, subject-verb agreement with collective nouns when verb forms depend on the rest of the sentence and with compound subjects, including those joined by or with the second element as singular or plural.
WL.12.1. Recognizing parallelism in phrases and clauses
AL.RI. Research and Inquiry - Students will:
RI.13. Combine all aspects of the research process to compose a report.
RI.13.1. Taking notes to gather and summarize information
RI.13.2. Using paraphrasing and documentation of sources to avoid plagiarism