Standards Map

English Language Arts and Literacy > Grade 8 > Reading Literature
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English Language Arts and Literacy | Grade : 8

Strand - Reading Literature

Cluster - Key Ideas and Details

[RL.8.2] - 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.

Resources:


  • Analysis (Analyze)
    In general, a careful examination of the parts of a whole and their relationships to one another; in language arts, a study of how words, sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, or sections of a text affect its meaning.
  • Character
    Person who takes part in the action of a story or drama; may also be an animal or imaginary creature, especially in fables and early emergent reader texts.
  • Grade 8 Annotated Literary Interpretation Essay
  • Grade 8 Unmarked Literary Interpretation Essay
  • Main/central idea
    Concept illustrated or position taken by a text as a whole, whether stated explicitly (as in a how-to guide explaining a process or an essay defending a thesis) or conveyed implicitly (as in a novel or collection of short stories illustrating a theme).
  • Massachusetts Anchor Standards for Reading
  • Plot
    Action or sequence of related events in a (usually fiction) narrative. Plot is usually a series of related incidents that builds and grows as the story develops. Plot lines commonly contain five basic elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution or denouement. See Conflict.
  • Setting
    Time and place of the action in a narrative, drama, or poem.
  • Summary
    An account of a text’s main points, disregarding unimportant details and usually employing the same order of events or topics as the source text. Summarizing is a basic reading technique that consolidates and demonstrates understanding of a text’s overall meaning. See Synthesis.
  • Theme
    Central message or abstract concept made concrete through representation in a literary text. Like a thesis, a theme implies a subject and predicate of some kind: for instance, not just vice as a standalone word, but a proposition such as Vice seems more interesting than virtue but turns out to be destructive. Sometimes a theme is directly stated in a work, and sometimes it is revealed indirectly. A single work may have more than one theme. See Main idea, Moral.

Predecessor Standards:

  • RL.7.2
    Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of a text.

Successor Standards:

  • RL.9-10.2
    Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Same Level Standards:

  • RL.8.8
    (Not applicable. For expectations regarding themes in literary works, See Reading Literature Standard 2.)