Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts

Who Did It? Passive Voice in the Swaledale Runoff Notice

A grade 8 worksheet on active and passive voice, using a fictional county notice about fertilizer runoff whose passive sentences hide who acted and who must act.

Grade: Grade 8
Subject: English Language Arts
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

W.8.2 Common Core ELA

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

How this material aligns: Items 8, 9, and 10 require students to compose informative sentences for the notice in active voice with a named actor, which is the precise language and formal style this standard specifies.

All materials for W.8.2 →

RI.8.1 Common Core ELA

Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

How this material aligns: Item 7 requires students to defend a judgment about the actor a passive sentence leaves out by citing the rest of the notice, and item 3 asks them to state what that construction keeps a reader from learning.

All materials for RI.8.1 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will identify passive constructions that leave the actor unnamed.
Students will rewrite passive sentences in active voice with an accurate actor.
Students will judge one case in which passive voice is the better choice and defend it.

Vocabulary

Key words: active voice, passive voice, actor, buffer strip, cover crop, nutrient runoff

Teacher overview

Grade 8 grammar work on active and passive voice usually stops at labeling, which teaches students to spot the construction without teaching them what it does to a reader. This worksheet uses a public notice about farm runoff, a document type where the missing actor has consequences: a sentence such as "a buffer strip was recommended" tells a landowner nothing about who recommended it or who was supposed to plant it. Students relabel, rewrite, and then defend the one sentence in the notice where passive voice is the right call because the actor really is the rain.

Who Did It? Passive Voice in the Swaledale Runoff Notice — Grade 8 English Language Arts

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Swaledale County and Harrier Creek are fictional, and the notice below was written for this worksheet. Read it once for meaning and once for its verbs.

Notice from the Swaledale County Soil and Water Office.

Elevated nitrate has been measured in Harrier Creek. Samples were collected at four sites in April and May. It has been determined that the increase is greatest downstream of the row-crop fields on Ballater Road. Fertilizer is applied in early spring. Some of it is carried into the roadside ditches by rain before the young crop can take it up. A buffer strip of grass along the ditches was recommended last year. The recommendation was not adopted. Cover crops will be seeded this fall on county-owned ground. Landowners are encouraged to attend the meeting on October 14. Funding may be made available.

"Elevated nitrate has been measured in Harrier Creek." Who most likely measured it? Rewrite the sentence in active voice, naming an actor the notice supports.
"Samples were collected at four sites in April and May." Rewrite this sentence in active voice.
"It has been determined that the increase is greatest downstream of the row-crop fields on Ballater Road." Rewrite it in active voice, then explain in one sentence what the passive version hides from a reader.
"A buffer strip of grass along the ditches was recommended last year. The recommendation was not adopted." Rewrite both sentences in active voice so a reader knows who recommended the buffer strip and who did not adopt it.
"Funding may be made available." Rewrite this in active voice. Then explain in one sentence why the passive version might leave a landowner less likely to act.
"Some of it is carried into the roadside ditches by rain before the young crop can take it up." This sentence uses passive voice well. Explain why passive voice is a reasonable choice here.
"Fertilizer is applied in early spring." Decide whether the missing actor matters in this sentence. Defend your choice in one or two sentences using the rest of the notice.
Combine the notice's first two sentences into one active-voice sentence of no more than twenty words that names the office, the sampling, and the finding.
Write one sentence in active voice telling landowners exactly what the office wants them to do before October 14.
Write a two-sentence closing for the notice, in active voice, explaining why the meeting matters. Use one subordinate clause.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: The Soil and Water Office, since the notice comes from that office and reports the measurement as its own finding. An acceptable rewrite is: The Swaledale County Soil and Water Office measured elevated nitrate in Harrier Creek.
Answer: Staff from the office collected samples at four sites in April and May. Accept any version that supplies a plausible actor from the notice and moves the verb out of the passive construction.
Answer: Office staff determined that the increase is greatest downstream of the row-crop fields on Ballater Road. The passive version hides who reached the conclusion, which keeps a reader from judging whether the finding came from the county, the state, or an outside group.
Answer: The office recommended a buffer strip of grass along the ditches last year, and the landowners along Ballater Road did not adopt the recommendation. Accept any pair of sentences that names a recommender and a party who declined, provided both are supported by the notice.
Answer: The office may offer funding to landowners who plant buffer strips. The passive version names nobody who could hand over the money, so a reader has no one to ask and no reason to believe the funding exists.
Answer: Because the actor is the rain, which the sentence already names in the by-phrase, and the point of the sentence is what happens to the fertilizer rather than who moved it. Passive voice keeps the fertilizer as the subject through the whole passage.
Answer: Accept either position with support. The stronger argument is that the actor does matter, because the notice goes on to ask landowners to change practices, so naming farmers as the ones who apply fertilizer makes the request coherent. Accept the opposite view if the student argues that the timing, not the actor, is the sentence's point.
Answer: Accept any active-voice version of twenty words or fewer that names the office, the April and May sampling, and the nitrate finding, such as: The Soil and Water Office sampled four sites in April and May and found elevated nitrate in Harrier Creek. Deduct if the sentence drops the sampling or runs past the word limit.
Answer: Accept any active-voice sentence with a clear instruction supported by the notice, such as: Bring your field map to the October 14 meeting and ask staff about buffer strip funding. The sentence must name the reader as the actor.
Answer: Accept any two active-voice sentences that include one subordinate clause and give an accurate reason to attend, such as: Because the office plans cover crops only on county-owned ground this fall, private fields will decide whether the creek improves. Come to the October 14 meeting and tell us what your land needs.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the notice with every passive verb phrase already underlined and a two-column chart headed "who acted" and "what happened," to be filled in before rewriting. Reduce the required items to 1, 2, 4, 6, and 9.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite the entire notice in active voice, then to write a short paragraph identifying the one or two sentences that became worse in the rewrite and explaining what the passive version was doing for the office in those places.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "actor," "runoff," "buffer strip," and "adopt" with a simple drawing of a field, a ditch, and a grass strip between them. Provide the frame "Who did it? ___ did it." for items 1 through 5, and allow explanations to be written as short phrases rather than full sentences.