Virginia SOL 12.RI.3.A
The Standard
Evaluate texts with differing points of view on the same or similar events or issues by assessing claims, reasoning, evidence, and connections to other works or historical events.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Integration of Concepts
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students compare how different authors present the same event or issue. They examine each author’s claims, evidence, logic, viewpoint, and use of historical or literary connections.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students identify each author’s position and point to passages that show how the argument is built. They judge which account is more convincing, explain why, and connect its ideas to relevant texts or events.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may confuse confident language with sound reasoning or assume more evidence always means better evidence. They may also treat disagreement as dishonesty while overlooking source credibility, omitted facts, framing, and historical context.
How to Assess It
- Give students two short editorials about school cellphone bans, with source notes. Ask them to choose the stronger argument and cite one claim, one piece of evidence, and one reasoning strength or weakness from each.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs printed protest accounts to color-code claims, evidence, reasoning, and historical references, then rank each account’s support.
Hold a fishbowl discussion: Which author interprets the event more convincingly, and what evidence or missing context shapes your judgment?
Run an Evidence Draft where teams select source cards for competing claims, earning points for credibility and relevance and losing points for weak reasoning.
Compare two news reports on a local policy, then write a brief recommending which report a community board should trust and why.
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Related Standards
- 10.RI.3.B
Analyze multiple texts addressing the same topic to determine how authors reach similar or different conclusions.
- 8.RI.2.C
Analyze how an author establishes and conveys a perspective or purpose in a text and acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.
- 8.RI.3.B
Compare and contrast how two or more authors present conflicting information on the same topic by assessing where the texts disagree in reasoning and evidence.
- 10.RI.3.A
Evaluate how different authors write about the same topic and shape their presentations or viewpoints of key information using facts, opinions, and reasoning.
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