South Dakota ELA 9-10.RL.4
The Standard
Analyze the impact of specific word choices and figurative language on meaning, mood, and tone (e.g., connotation, dialect, how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students find words and comparisons that shape how a scene feels and how a narrator sounds. They explain what those choices suggest and what would change if the writer chose different words.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student can explain why calling an eye 'the eye of a vulture' makes the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart sound obsessed. They can replace the phrase with 'eye' and explain what the passage loses.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may name a mood without pointing to the words that create it. They may treat 'crept' and 'walked' as equal, or mistake the narrator's voice for the author's opinion.
How to Assess It
- On an exit ticket, give students the line 'The hallway swallowed our footsteps' and ask: What mood does 'swallowed' create? Replace it with another verb and explain how the mood changes.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Hand pairs two printed storm scenes, one with 'howled' and 'shuddered,' one with 'blew' and 'moved'; have them circle mood-changing words.
Read the opening of The Tell-Tale Heart and ask students to write how repeating 'very' changes their view of the narrator.
Play a word-swap challenge: replace 'crept' in 'She crept upstairs' with 'stomped,' then explain how the mood changes.
Compare 'cozy' and 'cramped' in two apartment listings for the same room; students write which listing sounds more inviting and why.
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Printable 9-10.RL.4 Worksheet
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Related Standards
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