CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.8.3
The Standard
Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · Reading Standards for Informational Text
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify how an author connects or separates people, ideas, and events in an informational text. They explain the method used, such as comparison, contrast, analogy, or grouping.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students identify the exact comparison, contrast, analogy, or category used in a text. They explain how that connection shapes the reader’s understanding and support the explanation with relevant details.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may list people, ideas, or events without explaining how the author links them. They may confuse a difference in content with a distinction the author deliberately develops.
How to Assess It
- Give students one paragraph with two related ideas. Ask: “How does the author connect or distinguish these ideas, and which words or structure show that?”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a printed article and colored markers to label linked people, ideas, or events, then annotate how each link is built.
Ask students to write: “Why does the author compare these two ideas rather than explain each one separately?”
Use connection cards labeled comparison, contrast, analogy, and category, then have teams match each card to short passages.
Examine a news article comparing two public policies, then identify how its categories influence readers’ judgments.
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Printable RI.8.3 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.8.3, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.
Download the worksheetLearning progression
Where This Standard Sits
See the whole path on the Reading: Informational Text progression map.
Before This Standard
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What This Unlocks
Mastery here sets students up for these next.
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Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.3
Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.5
Analyze how the text structures information or ideas into categories or hierarchies, demonstrating understanding of the information or ideas.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
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