Common Core Standards
Grade 8
Reading RL.8.3
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.
Basically, this standard asks students to understand what makes a story a story. How do we know what its conflict is? How do we know what the characters we are supposed to root for (or boo at) are like? How do we know that Bob absolutely hates gouda? For that last question, we might be analyzing a sentence such as "Bob was on a quest to rid the world of gouda, but there was only one thing standing in his way: the world"—it's a perfect example of a sentence that not only reveals aspects of a character (that Bob hates gouda) but also propels the action, since now we know that the conflict of the story is Bob's quest to rid the world of gouda.
Example 1
Here's an example lesson to use when your students are reading To Kill a Mockingbird.
Have students discuss what characteristics a good parent might have. Using these points, have students write a character analysis of Atticus Finch. Students should use examples from the text to show how the novel develops his character.
Aligned Resources
- Teaching A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Follow the Thread
- Teaching A Wrinkle in Time: Famous Kids Traveling in Threes (or Fours)
- Teaching Johnny Tremain: Good and Bad
- Teaching Murder on the Orient Express: The Theme's the Thing
- Teaching The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963: Let's Do the Time Warp
- Teaching Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: Integration In Our Nation
- Teaching The Outsiders: Interviewing an Outsider
- Teaching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Murder Mystery
- Teaching The Fault in Our Stars: It's in the Details – Plot and Themes
- Teaching Because of Winn-Dixie: Because of Winn-Dixie: Yes, That's Actually the Title of This Assignment
- Teaching Because of Winn-Dixie: Channeling Winn-Dixie
- Teaching The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Split Identities: Being Two at Once
- Teaching The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Your Own Absolutely True Diary
- Teaching The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Fence-Painting in Other Contexts
- Teaching The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Modern-Day Toms and Hucks
- Teaching The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Only in Dreams
- Teaching The Westing Game: A Puzzle Mystery: Wanted: Dead or Wax Look-Alike!
- Teaching To Kill a Mockingbird: A Dream Deferred
- Teaching Where the Red Fern Grows: An Instance of Persistence
- Teaching Flowers for Algernon: The Search for Me
- Teaching A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Nickeled & Dimed
- Teaching And Then There Were None: Character Cards
- Teaching And Then There Were None: Order in the Court
- Teaching Animal Farm: The Power of Words
- Teaching Moon Over Manifest: Operation "I Spy"
- Teaching Moon Over Manifest: Ode to a Static or Dynamic Character
- ELA Online: Digital Literacy Connections to English Language Arts: Twilight Activity: The Cullen Cars
- Teaching The Fault in Our Stars: SomeThemes Going on Here
- Teaching Monster: Who Am I?
- Teaching Murder on the Orient Express: The Mysterious Story
- Teaching Freak the Mighty: Rhyme Time
- Teaching Of Mice and Men: Photo Synthesis
- Teaching Johnny Tremain: A Special Q&A Session with the Cast
- Teaching Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry: T.J.'s Downward Spiral
- Teaching Dead End in Norvelt: The Aftermath of War