Virginia SOL 3.RL.2.C
The Standard
Identify the narrator of a story and the speaker of a poem.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Craft and Style
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students determine whose voice presents the events in a story and whose voice speaks in a poem. They use pronouns, dialogue, and text details to support their answer.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can tell whether a story is narrated by a character or an outside voice. The student can identify a poem’s speaker and cite words that reveal who is speaking.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume the author is always the narrator or the poet is always the speaker. They may confuse character dialogue with narration or assume the main character tells every story.
How to Assess It
- Give students a short story paragraph and a four-line poem. Ask them to identify each voice and underline one clue that supports each answer.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs colored sticky notes to mark narrator clues in a story and speaker clues in a poem, then label each voice.
Ask, “Who is talking, and which words prove it?” Students answer using one quoted clue from each text.
Play Voice Detective: read short passages aloud, and teams hold up cards labeled character narrator, outside narrator, or poem speaker.
Compare an audiobook’s author, voice actor, narrator, and characters, then identify which role tells the story.
Free download
Printable 3.RL.2.C Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 3.RL.2.C, 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 worksheetKeep exploring
Related Standards
- K.FFR.1.D
Identify the author and illustrator of a text and define the role of each
- 4.RL.2.C
The 4th Grade version of this standard.
- 5.RL.3.B
Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first-and third-person narratives.
- 6.RL.2.C
Explain how an author develops the point of view (e.g., first-person, third person limited, third-person omniscient) of the narrator or speaker in a text and in...
Turn this exact standard into a lesson
Grade, subject, topic, and the complete standard are prefilled. Create one free, no account needed.