CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.9
The Standard
Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington's Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"), including how they address related themes and concepts.
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 read major U.S. speeches, letters, and public documents from different periods. They compare how authors develop related ideas through claims, evidence, word choice, and historical context.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students cite precise lines from two or more documents to support a comparison. They explain how each author’s claims, language, and historical setting shape the treatment of a shared idea.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may summarize each document separately instead of comparing them. They may treat shared words like freedom or equality as having the same meaning in every historical context.
How to Assess It
- Give students short excerpts from the Gettysburg Address and “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Ask them to identify one shared idea and explain how each author develops it differently, using one detail from each excerpt.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Post excerpts from four documents around the room; students annotate each for freedom, equality, unity, and civic duty using colored notes.
Ask students to write: How do Lincoln and King define justice differently, and which words reveal each speaker’s historical situation?
Run a quotation sort: teams match anonymous lines to documents, name the shared theme, then defend each match with textual clues.
Compare a document’s claim about freedom with a current school policy or public speech, then identify one continuity and one change.
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Printable RI.9-10.9 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.9, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.
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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
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Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.9
Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from th...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.8
Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of constitutional principles and use of legal reasoning (e.g., in U.S. Sup...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.9b
Apply grades 11—12 Reading standards to literary nonfiction (e.g., "Delineate and evaluate the reasoning in seminal U.S. texts, including the application of con...
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