The POV Patrol
On the MCAS, when you make a claim about a character, you must provide this—specific sentences or details taken directly from the passage to prove your answer is right.
What is text evidence?
This type of figurative language compares two unlike things using the words "like" or "as." For example: "The surface of the lake was as smooth as glass."
What is a simile?
This text feature is found directly underneath or next to a photograph or illustration; it explains what is happening in the picture.
What is a caption?
This part of speech expresses an action or a state of being.
What is a verb?
This prefix means "not" or "the opposite of." It turns the word "happy" into its opposite and "kind" into its opposite.
What is un-?
This is the "big idea" or the life lesson the author wants the reader to learn from a story, such as "honesty is the best policy" or "don't give up."
What is the theme?
This is when an author gives human qualities to non-human things. For example: "The wind whistled through the trees" or "The alarm clock yelled at me to wake up."
What is personification?
This is the most exciting or intense part of the story, often called the "peak" of the plot mountain, where the main character faces the conflict head-on.
What is the climax?
These words take the place of a specific noun to keep a sentence from being repetitive. Examples include he, she, they, and it.
What are pronouns?
Adding this suffix to the end of a verb changes it into a person who performs that action.
What is -er?
To do this, a reader must combine what they already know (schema) with clues from the text to figure out something the author didn't say directly.
What is making an inference?
This is a direct comparison that does not use "like" or "as." If a teacher says, "My classroom was a zoo today," they are using this.
What is a metaphor?
While a story is organized into paragraphs, a poem is organized into these "groups of lines" that look like little blocks of text.
What are stanzas?
While an adjective describes a noun, this part of speech describes a verb, an adjective, or another one of itself—often ending in -ly.
What is an adverb?
This Greek root means "life." It is found in the word for a book about a person's life and the study of living things.
What is bio?
Unlike a mood, which is temporary, these are the permanent qualities of a character's personality, such as "brave," "selfish," or "loyal."
What are character traits?
These are common expressions that mean something totally different from the literal words used. For example, before performing in a play you might be told to "break a leg"
What is an idiom?
Every story needs one of these to have a plot! It is the struggle between opposing forces (like a character vs. nature or a character vs. their own fear).
What is the conflict?
This is the past tense form of the irregular verbs "run" and "catch." (Example: Yesterday, I ___ to the park and ___ a baseball.)
What are ran and caught?
Use the clues in this sentence to define "strenuous": The hike up the steep mountain was so strenuous that the students were exhausted and out of breath when they reached the top.
What is difficult, tiring, or hard work?
This is the reason an author writes a specific text—usually to Persuade, Inform, Entertain, or Describe
What is author's purpose?
In the sentence, "The heavy backpack was a ton of bricks on his shoulders," the author uses this figurative language to show that the backpack was this.
What is very heavy? (Bonus: The figurative language is hyperbole or a metaphor).
In a story's structure, the protagonist is the main character working toward a goal, while this character (or force) works against them to create conflict.
What is the antagonist?
This part of speech shows the relationship (like direction, time, or location) between a noun and another part of the sentence. Examples include under, toward, and during.
What is a preposition?
In a science text, this word means a thin, hard plate covering a fish. In math, it is a tool used to measure the weight of an object.
What is a scale?