Maryland ELA W.8.7

ELA8th GradeWriting

The Standard

Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.

Maryland College and Career Ready Standards for English Language Arts (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What This Standard Means

What Students Need to Do: Students choose a question they can answer in a short project. They gather facts from several sources, use them to answer the question, and write a focused follow-up question.
What Mastery Looks Like: They answer their question with facts from at least three sources. They show which source supports each fact. They spot an unanswered point and write a question they could research next.
Common Misconceptions: Students may rely on the first source they find or copy a claim without checking who wrote it. Their follow-up question may repeat the original question or be too broad to research.
How to Assess It: Give students three short excerpts about school lunch waste. Ask: "How could our school reduce lunch waste? Use one fact from each excerpt, then write one narrower question you still need to investigate."

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

Give pairs three printed sources on lunch waste; have them highlight useful facts and sort them onto a chart under their research question.
Ask, "Which source best supports a plan to cut lunch waste, and what question does it leave unanswered?" Have partners defend their choices.
Play Source Match: post four research questions and source cards; teams match each card to a question and reject one off-topic card.
Have students read the school lunch menu and a city compost guide, then draft two questions for the cafeteria manager about reducing waste.

Free download