Virginia 8th Grade ELA Standards in Writing

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W Writing

• W.8.7 The student will write in a variety of forms to include narrative, expository, persuasive, and reflective with an emphasis on expository and persuasive writing.
  • W.8.7.a Engage in writing as a recursive process.
  • W.8.7.b Choose intended audience and purpose.
  • W.8.7.c Use prewriting strategies to generate and organize ideas.
  • W.8.7.d Organize writing structure to fit form or topic.
  • W.8.7.e Establish a central idea incorporating evidence, maintaining an organized structure and formal style.
  • W.8.7.f Compose a thesis statement for persuasive writing that advocates a position.
  • W.8.7.g Clearly state and defend a position with reasons and evidence, from credible sources.
  • W.8.7.h Identify a counterclaim and provide a counter – argument.
  • W.8.7.i Distinguish between fact and opinion to support a position.
  • W.8.7.j Organize information to provide elaboration and unity.
  • W.8.7.k Develop and modify the central idea, tone, and voice to fit the audience and purpose.
  • W.8.7.l Revise writing for clarity of content, word choice, sentence variety, and transitions among paragraphs.
• W.8.8 The student will self- and peer-edit writing for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, paragraphing, and Standard English.
  • W.8.8.a Use and punctuate correctly varied sentence structures to include conjunctions and transition words.
  • W.8.8.b Correctly use pronouns in prepositional phrases with compound objects.
  • W.8.8.c Use a variety of sentence structures to infuse sentence variety in writing.
  • W.8.8.d Maintain consistent verb tense across paragraphs.
  • W.8.8.e Use comparative and superlative degrees in adverbs and adjectives.
  • W.8.8.f Use quotation marks with dialogue and direct quotations.
  • W.8.8.g Use correct spelling for frequently used words.