Georgia L6-8WHST1.d
The Standard
Establish and maintain a formal style.
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies · Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students present social studies arguments with precise subject terms, complete sentences, and an objective tone. They keep that tone consistent and replace slang, texting abbreviations, casual asides, and vague wording.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student writes a clear claim and supporting reasons with accurate historical vocabulary and an objective tone. The wording stays consistent from opening to conclusion and fits a school history essay.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think long words automatically make writing sound academic, even when the terms are inaccurate. They may switch between academic wording and slang or use first person in every claim. Some mistake an objective tone for removing all evidence-based judgment.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Rewrite “I think the Romans were super good at building stuff” for a history essay without changing its meaning.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs sentence cards from a mock history essay; students sort them into formal and informal piles, then revise two informal examples.
Compare “I think the king was bad” with “The king’s policies harmed farmers,” then ask students to explain which suits a history argument.
Play Formal Style Fix-It: teams rewrite slang, contractions, and vague words in short social studies claims, earning one point per clear revision.
Show a museum exhibit label and a casual social media caption about the same event; students identify wording suited to each audience.
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Related Standards
- L6-8WHST2.e
Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone.
- L6-8WHST4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- L6-8WHST6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.
- L6-8WHST2.c
Use appropriate and varied transitions to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts.
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