South Dakota ELA 7.W.6.a

ELA7th GradeWriting

The Standard

7.W.6: Use technology, including digital tools/platforms, to format, produce, and publish writing.

Link to and cite sources with a standard format such as MLA or APA.

South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students add links to online sources and cite them in a consistent format, such as MLA or APA. They show which source supports each borrowed fact and give readers enough details to find it.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can cite a webpage with an author and one without one. Their in-text citations match their source list, and their links open the right pages.
Common Misconceptions: Students may think a pasted URL counts as a full citation. They may list a source at the end but leave borrowed facts unmarked. They may mistake the website name for the page author.
How to Assess It: Open NASA’s homepage at https://www.nasa.gov/. Ask students to write one fact from the page, add an MLA in-text citation, and make a Works Cited entry with a clickable link.

Lesson moves

Print a mock webpage, then have students cut out its author, title, site, date, and URL and arrange them into an MLA entry.
Show a paragraph with a bare URL and one with an MLA citation, then ask which makes its claim easier to check.
Give pairs three sample MLA entries and a checklist, then have them race to fix misplaced titles and missing URLs.
Students check their town’s National Weather Service forecast, write a one-sentence outdoor practice plan, and link and cite the forecast.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 7.W.6.a, 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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