ELA / Grade 9-10 / Strand: Reading / Task Category: Craft and Structure of Informational Text
CCR Anchor Standards:
  1. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
  2. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
  3. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

Standards:
RI4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).
RI5. Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).
RI6. Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.
Score 4.0 / I can theorize how the addition, absence, or replacement of specific phrases, rhetorical devices, and graphical information/data would alter meaning related to the same topic, purpose, or point of view.
Score 3.0 / I can analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone within a text, including words that signal a particular audience, purpose, and context the author addresses
(e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).
I can analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance his or her point of view or purpose.
I can analyze how these words and rhetorical choices support and refine the author’s claim(s).
Score 2.0 / I can categorize key words and phrases based on their meaning and tone, including how these words suggest/imply a main idea or claim, the context, audience, author’s purpose and point of view.
I can reflect on the similarities and differences between the effect these word choices have.
I know and can provide examples of the following terms: rhetoric, rhetorical device, data
Score 1.0 / I can identify the following:
• author’s purpose, point of view, audience, and context or situation of the text.
• words and data that express a dominant idea in portions of a text.
• words that indicate a pattern or structure to the author’s thinking.
Score 0.0 / I am not yet able to:
  • identify the criteria in score 1.0.
Prerequisite knowledge: text structure, (sequence, comparison, cause/effect, opinion/reason, problem/solution),