Reading: 8th Grade

May 29, 2014

Age

13

Young happy student lying on library floor reading book

May 29, 2014

In 8th grade, students continue to practice many of the skills they learned in earlier grades, specifically paying attention to details like text evidence, language, and cross-text comparisons in different genres of text. However, 8th graders push their analyses of texts further as they examine the details and writing structure and assess how those elements affect the text. 

For Scholastic’s recommended reading list of books for 6th-8th graders click here.

In order to build reading skills, your 8th grader:

  • Evaluates the evidence in texts to determine the strongest supports of an idea and analysis.
  • Determines the main idea or theme of a text using evidence from the text to support it.
  • Provides an objective summary of a text.
  • Understands, summarizes, and tracks the progress of the main idea of a text, using evidence from the text.
  • Analyzes how elements such as specific dialogue, events, or word usage impact the characters, the decisions they make, and other events and actions in the text.
  • Understands the use of language in a text, including figurative language, analogies, and allusions to other texts.
  • Compares and contrasts the different structures of texts including the structures of paragraphs and sentences.
  • Analyzes the difference between characters’ points of view and how these differences affect the text.
  • Analyzes the pros and cons of using different forms of text and media to present a topic or idea.
  • Compares a text to a film or play version of a text, paying specific attention to the way in which the film or play veers from the text.
  • Analyzes how a modern text builds on or uses themes from other historical or older texts such as myths or the Bible.
  • Analyzes texts that include conflicting information on the same topic and decipher when those are due to conflicting facts or interpretations.
Age 13