Virginia SOL 12.RI.2.A
The Standard
Analyze text structures to discern how they affect the meaning and message of informational and technical writing and how their text structures differ from those in narrative texts.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Craft and Style
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify how an informational or technical text is organized. They explain how that organization shapes meaning, emphasis, and message, then compare it with narrative organization.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students correctly identify structures such as sequence, comparison, problem and solution, and cause and effect. They explain how the chosen structure emphasizes ideas and differs from narrative organization.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may name a structure, such as cause and effect, without explaining its impact. They may confuse structure with topic or assume a text uses only one structure.
How to Assess It
- Give students one technical paragraph and one narrative paragraph. Ask them to identify each structure and explain in two sentences how each structure shapes the reader’s understanding.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a cut-up technical article to reorder, then have them mark clues that reveal the intended structure.
Ask students to compare a news report with a personal account of the same event and explain how organization changes the message.
Run a structure-sort game using short excerpts labeled sequence, comparison, cause and effect, problem and solution, or narrative.
Compare an appliance manual with a customer’s story about using the appliance, focusing on how each structure serves its audience.
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