South Dakota ELA 11-12.RL.6
The Standard
Analyze how the author's background, point of view, and/or purpose shapes the content and style from diverse texts. Evaluate the author's choice of what is stated explicitly or implicitly. Reflect on how personal experiences impact interpretations of a text.
South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how a writer’s background, viewpoint, or purpose affects what a poem or story says and how it sounds. They separate stated ideas from implied ones and consider how their own experiences shape their reading.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Given two texts and brief author notes, students connect a detail from each note to a choice in language or content. They cite lines for stated and implied ideas, then explain why a classmate might read the same lines differently.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may treat a poem’s speaker as the author or assume a biography proves what the author meant. They may call a personal reaction an implied meaning without pointing to words in the text.
How to Assess It
- Hand out Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B” with a short author note. Ask: “What idea is stated, what idea is implied, and how might a detail from the note and your own experience affect your reading? Cite two lines.”
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs printed copies of Hughes’s “Theme for English B” and Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus”; color-code stated ideas and implied beliefs.
After reading brief author notes, ask: “Which word choice shows each writer’s viewpoint or purpose, and what in the note supports your claim?”
Play claim sort with sentence strips labeled “stated,” “implied,” or “unsupported”; students defend each placement with a line from a poem.
Read two reviews of a film adaptation of a class novel; mark each reviewer’s stated opinion, implied view, and a point you read differently.
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Related Standards
- 9-10.RL.6
Assess how point of view and/or author purpose shapes the content and style of culturally diverse texts, including those from outside the United States. Reflect...
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Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a text (e.g., context, setting, theme, plot events, structure, and ch...
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