Virginia SOL 4.RL.2.D
The Standard
Differentiate between first-and third-person point of view.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Craft and Style
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students decide whether the narrator takes part in the story or tells about characters from outside the action. They use pronouns and narration clues to support their choice.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students correctly identify whether the narrator is a character in the story or an outside observer. They support the answer with narrator pronouns and details about what the narrator knows.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume any use of “I” makes a story first person, even when the word appears only in dialogue. They may also confuse point of view with the main character or the narrator’s opinion.
How to Assess It
- Give students two short passages, one narrated by a character and one by an outside narrator. Ask them to label each viewpoint and underline one clue.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs pronoun cards and short passages, then have them sort each passage under “narrator inside” or “narrator outside.”
Ask students to explain how a scene changes when a character tells it instead of an outside narrator.
Play Point of View Corners by reading passages aloud while students move to the first-person or third-person corner and name a clue.
Compare a personal diary entry with a news report about the same event, focusing on who tells each account.
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Related Standards
- 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...
- 7.RL.2.C
Explain how an author develops the points of view of different characters in a text (e.g., first-person, third person limited, third-person omniscient) and how ...
- 8.RL.2.C
Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.
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