Virginia SOL 6.RL.2.B
The Standard
Explain elements of author’s style as purposeful choices (e.g., imagery, figurative language, and word choice) to develop tone.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English · Craft and Style
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify language choices that shape an author’s voice and attitude. They use details from the text to explain why those choices create a particular tone.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students select precise words or phrases as evidence and name the tone accurately. They explain how the author’s language makes the voice sound amused, tense, bitter, hopeful, or another fitting description.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may confuse tone, the author’s attitude, with mood, the reader’s feeling. They may name a technique but not explain how specific language creates the tone.
How to Assess It
- Use an exit ticket: Identify one style choice in today’s passage, name the tone, and explain how the quoted language creates that tone.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a printed paragraph to color-code imagery, figurative language, and loaded words, then label the tone each choice helps create.
Ask students to write: Which single word would you replace to shift the tone, and why would your replacement work?
Play Tone Detective: teams match short passages to tone cards and earn a point only after citing and explaining one style choice.
Compare two product ads, marking imagery and word choice that make one sound playful and the other serious.
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Printable 6.RL.2.B Worksheet
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Related Standards
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Analyze how the elements of an author’s style (e.g., word choice, sentence structure, dialogue, figurative language, imagery) are used to influence and develop ...
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- 11.RL.2.B
Evaluate how authors use specific word choices, syntax, tone, and voice to convey the author’s intent and viewpoint.
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