Virginia SOL 8.RL.2.C
The Standard
Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Craft and Style
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify what different characters or narrators notice, believe, and misunderstand. They explain how dialogue, actions, thoughts, and selected details build differences between those perspectives.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students track each character’s beliefs, reactions, and knowledge across key scenes. They use specific details to explain how the writer builds a contrast and why it matters.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may confuse first-person or third-person narration with a character’s individual perspective. They may list differences without showing how dialogue, thoughts, or actions reveal and change those views.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Choose two characters from today’s scene. Cite one detail for each perspective, then explain how the author makes their views differ.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Color-code a shared scene for each character’s observations, judgments, and reactions, then connect matching or conflicting details with string.
Write a response to this prompt: How would each character describe the conflict, and what causes their accounts to differ?
Play Perspective Match, where teams pair quotation cards with characters and justify each match using context from the text.
Compare two eyewitness accounts of a school event, then identify how experience, goals, and knowledge shape each person’s version.
Free download
Printable 8.RL.2.C Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 8.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
- 8.RI.2.C
Analyze how an author establishes and conveys a perspective or purpose in a text and acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
- 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 ...
Turn this exact standard into a lesson
Grade, subject, topic, and the complete standard are prefilled. Create one free, no account needed.