CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5
The Standard
Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · Speaking and Listening Standards
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students select digital media that helps an audience understand their claims, reasoning, and evidence. They integrate text, charts, images, audio, video, or interactive features without distracting from the message.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students choose media that directly supports a claim, explains evidence, or makes a pattern easier to see. Slides are readable, clips are brief, and each element fits smoothly into the spoken presentation.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often add images, animations, or music only for decoration. They may crowd slides with text, use unreadable graphs, or let a video replace their own explanation.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Create one slide supporting the claim, “Later school start times benefit teenagers.” Include one media element and explain its purpose in one sentence.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a data table and ask them to build one clear chart, then present how it strengthens a specific claim.
Show two versions of the same slide and ask students to write which one communicates better and why.
Play Media Match by having teams pair claims with charts, photos, audio clips, or maps and defend each choice.
Analyze a news presentation to identify how its graphics, clips, and captions shape the audience’s understanding of the evidence.
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Printable SL.11-12.5 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5, 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 Speaking & Listening progression map.
Before This Standard
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Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.8.5
Integrate multimedia and visual displays into presentations to clarify information, strengthen claims and evidence, and add interest.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.5
Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.7.5
Include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points.
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