CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.5
The Standard
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).
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · Reading Standards for Informational Text
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace one idea or claim across an informational text. They explain how specific sentences, paragraphs, or sections add evidence, introduce contrast, clarify meaning, or sharpen the claim.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students identify a key sentence, paragraph, or section and explain its function. They cite details showing how it adds evidence, introduces a distinction, answers a concern, or narrows the claim.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often summarize each paragraph instead of explaining its role. They may confuse the topic with the claim or label evidence without showing how it changes the claim.
How to Assess It
- Give students a three-paragraph article. Ask, "Which sentence or paragraph most sharpens the author’s main claim, and how does it do so?"
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Cut a short article into paragraphs, then have groups arrange them and explain how each paragraph develops the claim.
Ask students to write: Which sentence changes or sharpens the author’s claim most, and what would be lost without it?
Play Claim Builder by giving teams paragraph cards to match with roles such as evidence, counterclaim, clarification, example, or conclusion.
Compare a news analysis and an editorial on the same issue, marking where each writer strengthens or limits a claim.
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Printable RI.9-10.5 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.5, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.
Download the worksheetLearning progression
Where This Standard Sits
See the whole path on the Reading: Informational Text progression map.
Before This Standard
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What This Unlocks
Mastery here sets students up for these next.
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Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5
Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relat...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.5
Analyze the structure an author uses to organize a text, including how the major sections contribute to the whole and to the development of the ideas.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.5
Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.
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