RI.8.8

Description: Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.
Maps to Reading Plus skills: 6B, 8A

Exemplars

6B: Recognizing Persuasion

6B: Recognizing Persuasion

Description: Recognizing Persuasive Devices

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: H-29

H-29

Grade level: 8
Word count: 1848 words
Author: Joanna May Thach
Synopsis: It's a challenge to keep city trees healthy and make residents aware of their benefits.
Excerpt: But a single type of tree in a neighborhood can be boring. Urban foresters continually recommend that a neighborhood have different species of trees. In the climate of New York City, the Callery pear is an alternative to the London plane tree. The name Callery pear may give the impression of messy fruit but that is not the case.

Question: Choose the sentence in this excerpt that states the author's opinion.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Use the Internet and other research tools to find evidence that refutes an idea, belief, or theme presented in a selection.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions

8A: Judging Validity

8A: Judging Validity

Description: Judge Validity

SeeReader
✓ standard met

Selection: H-40

H-40

Grade level: 8
Word count: 1938 words
Author: Guinevere Tobias
Synopsis: During a television broadcast, Winton comes face to face with the people whom he had saved during the war.
Excerpt: Nicholas Winton, whose gray hair and weathered features betrayed his 78 years, sat in the first row of the television studio. He had come to the live broadcast of this famous British television program because of a notebook that his wife Grete had recently unearthed while sorting through some long-neglected possessions in his home's attic. The couple had been married for decades, but Winton had never shared the notebook with his wife or discussed his activities in the years before World War II.

Question: Which sentence provides evidence that Winton was truly modest about his work on the Kindertransports?
  1. Winton had never shared the notebook with his wife or discussed his activities in the years before World War II.
  2. Traveling throughout Europe during the 1930s, Nicholas Winton observed Adolf Hitler's rise to power with increasing horror.
  3. After working at the Stock Exchange during the day, Winton and his mother worked on the first Kindertransport in the evening.
  4. It seemed to the elderly couple that the notebook belonged in the collection of a library or an archive.

Writing
✓ standard met

Writing prompt: Imagine you are developing a new app to determine if a text is true or not true. What text clues would the app need to search for to judge validity? Provide examples.

Evaluator

Organization: Certica Solutions