CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.1d
The Standard
Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students choose precise, neutral language and keep that tone consistent across an argument. They follow the vocabulary, structure, formatting, and citation practices expected in the subject.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A strong response avoids slang, casual asides, unsupported opinions, and emotional wording. It uses subject-specific terms accurately and presents claims through evidence-based statements. The tone stays consistent from beginning to end.
Common Misconceptions
- Students often think formal writing must sound wordy or use unfamiliar vocabulary. They may remove first-person pronouns but keep biased claims, contractions, or conversational phrases. They may also use the same format and citation habits in every subject.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Revise “I totally think the data proves our school’s recycling plan is awesome” for a formal science report, then name two changes.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs sentence strips from lab reports, history essays, and technical manuals to sort by discipline, then annotate the language clues.
Ask students to rewrite one claim for a historian, scientist, and engineer, then explain how the tone and conventions changed.
Play Formal Tone Fix-It: teams revise slang, exaggeration, and biased wording on cards, earning points for precise, neutral replacements.
Compare a company’s social media post with its safety report, then have students mark differences in tone, evidence, and formatting.
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Printable WHST.11-12.1d Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.WHST.11-12.1d, 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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