CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.7
The Standard
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · Reading Standards for Literature
What This Standard Means
Students need to explain how pictures, layout, sound, movement, or performance choices shape a story or poem. They should connect a specific visual or media choice to meaning, mood, tone, or beauty, not just say they liked it.
Mastery looks like using evidence from both the words and the added element. A student might say a dark color palette makes a myth feel dangerous, then connect it to a character’s fear. Students often get stuck describing what they see or hear without explaining its effect.
Ways to Teach It
- Give pairs a page from a graphic novel and have them label three panels showing how color, angle, or facial expression changes the mood.
- Ask students to write: How did the illustration or sound effect change what you understood about the character or setting?
- Show one illustrated poem page and ask students to complete: The visual element contributes to the tone by blank because blank.
- Compare a book cover, movie trailer, and printed excerpt for the same story, then discuss how each shapes your expectations.
Plan a Lesson for CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.7
Generate a complete lesson plan aligned to this standard, with objectives, activities, and materials. Free, no account needed.
Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.7
Compare and contrast a text to an audio, video, or multimedia version of the text, analyzing each medium's portrayal of the subject (e.g., how the delivery of a...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.5.5
Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.7.2
Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify ...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.7
Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a charact...