CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.5

ELAGrades 9–10Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

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 choose digital elements that help an audience understand a claim, line of reasoning, or piece of evidence. They integrate those elements into a presentation and explain their relevance.
What Mastery Looks Like: Students select media that fits a clear purpose, such as a graph for comparison or audio for tone. They connect each element to their reasoning and keep slides readable and focused.
Common Misconceptions: Students often add images, animations, or music only for decoration. They may crowd slides with text, show a graph without explaining it, or use media that distracts from the claim.
How to Assess It: Give students a claim, three facts, and a small data table. Ask them to sketch one slide and explain in one sentence how the chosen media clarifies the evidence.

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

Give pairs a crowded slide and have them rebuild it using one chart, one labeled image, and no more than 20 words.
Show two slides supporting the same claim, then ask students to write which communicates better and cite two design choices.
Play Media Match by giving teams evidence cards and having them choose a graph, image, audio clip, map, or text excerpt.
Have students create a one-slide public service announcement that combines a local statistic with an image and a clear spoken explanation.

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