CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.10
The Standard
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · Reading Standards for Informational Text
What This Standard Means
Students need to read grade-level literary nonfiction, such as essays, speeches, memoir excerpts, articles, and biographies, with enough stamina and accuracy to understand the main ideas, structure, evidence, and author’s point of view. They should handle harder texts with support, then need less support over time.
Mastery looks like finishing a complex nonfiction text and explaining what it says, how it is built, and why the author made certain choices. Students often get stuck on dense sentences, unfamiliar background knowledge, figurative language in nonfiction, and tracking claims across long paragraphs.
Ways to Teach It
- Give pairs a short speech excerpt, highlighters, and margin notes to mark the claim, key evidence, and confusing lines.
- Ask students to write: Which sentence best shows the author’s purpose, and what makes you think so?
- Use an exit ticket with one paragraph: students write the main idea, one supporting detail, and one hard word they solved.
- Have students compare a current news feature with a memoir excerpt on the same issue and list how each writer builds understanding.
Before This Standard
If students are struggling here, check these first.
Plan a Lesson for CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.10
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What This Unlocks
Mastery here sets students up for these next.
Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.10
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 6—8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffold...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.10
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of grades 6—8 text complexity band independently a...