Common Core State Standards

Form and use verbs in the active and passive voice.

Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.

Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).

Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington's Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, King's Letter from Birmingham Jail), including how they address related themes and concepts.

Apply grade 8 Reading standards to literary nonfiction (e.g., 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).

Apply grade 8 Reading standards to literature (e.g., Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new).

Establish and maintain a formal style.

Establish and maintain a formal style.

Come to discussions prepared, having read or researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence on the topic, text, or issue to probe and reflect on ideas under discussion.

Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation.