Georgia L6-8WHST2.e
The Standard
Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone.
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies · Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/experiments, or technical processes.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students write about historical events and ideas using precise academic language. They keep a neutral tone, avoid slang and unsupported opinions, and use evidence to explain claims.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can revise casual or biased wording into clear, formal sentences without changing the facts. The student maintains that tone throughout a paragraph and attributes viewpoints to sources.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think formal writing requires long words or stiff sentences. They may confuse objective tone with having no claim, or present opinions as facts by using loaded words.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Rewrite, “The greedy king made a totally dumb decision to raise taxes,” in a formal, objective tone. Underline the words you changed.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs sentence strips to sort into formal, informal, objective, and biased groups, then have them revise two informal or biased examples.
Prompt students to explain whether a historian can make a claim and remain objective, using one example from the current unit.
Play Tone Detective: teams identify slang, exaggeration, first person, and loaded words in short passages, earning points for accurate revisions.
Have students rewrite a dramatic social media post about a local issue as a neutral newspaper brief using verified facts.
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Related Standards
- L6-8WHST1.d
Establish and maintain a formal style.
- L6-8WHST1
Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
- L6-8WHST4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
- L6-8WHST2.d
Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
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