Form and use verbs in the active and passive voice; choose deliberately for effect (CCSS L.8.1.b; L.8.3.a)

Form active and passive voice verbs accurately. Identify voice in mentor sentences. Choose between active and passive voice deliberately based on what the writer wants to foreground (actor vs. action). Apply active voice as the argumentative-prose default; apply passive voice for scientific procedure and when actor is unknown/irrelevant.

Mastery threshold

85%

Min instances

Typical minutes

Spaced intervals (days)

1, 3, 7, 14, 30

Prereqs

Identify and use gerunds, participles, and infinitives in their functions (CCSS L.8.1.a)

Successors

Common misconceptions

Confuses passive voice with past tense ('the experiment was conducted' is passive; 'the team conducted the experiment' is active past tense — both are past).
Avoids passive voice entirely (some writing handbooks oversimplify the rule). Passive serves real purposes in scientific and procedural writing.

Exercise pool (3)

Diff	Stem	Type
2	Label voice (ACTIVE or PASSIVE) for each sentence. For passive, note whether actor is named (in by-phrase) or omitted. (1) 'Adichie...	voice identification
3	Transform 5 sentences from active to passive (and 5 from passive to active). For each pair, write 1 sentence explaining which voice...	voice transformation justification
4	Audit this 5-sentence scientific-procedure passage for voice. Label each main-clause verb. Determine: is each voice choice DELIBERATE...	voice passage audit