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9th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 9 of 12

Form & Composing

Pick the right form for your audience and shape a clear text.

What your child practices

Practices choosing a form for purpose and audience, tone, organization, transitions, text features and design choices when composing and publishing.

Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards benchmark: 9.3.2.1; 9.2.3.2 · adapting writing to its audience and context

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Choose a form for your purpose and audience: a how-to guide explains steps, a letter speaks to one reader.
  2. When you revise, improve ideas, organization and wording. Put the strongest point first in persuasive writing.
  3. Use transitions, text features and design to make the text clear.

Example: Which form best explains the steps for building a bird feeder: a poem, a how-to guide or a review? The goal is to explain steps in order. A how-to guide is made for that. Answer: a how-to guide

Form & Composing in Minnesota

In the Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards, this is unit 9 of 12 in 9th grade English Language Arts, after Summarizing Texts and before Research & Credibility.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    When writing for a formal audience such as a principal, you should use…

    • polite, precise language
    • only pictures
    • slang and text-message spellings

  2. Question 2

    Which form best tells a made-up story?

    • a news report
    • an instruction manual
    • a short story

  3. Question 3

    A paragraph jumps from soccer to volcanoes. The best fix is to…

    • delete the conclusion
    • keep paragraphs focused on one main idea
    • join it with the next paragraph

  4. Question 4

    Which feature helps a reader find information quickly in a long report?

    • a longer title
    • a bigger font on every page
    • headings

  5. Question 5

    When writing for a Grade 3 audience, you should use…

    • technical terms without explanation
    • very long paragraphs
    • simple words and short sentences

  6. Question 6

    Which transition word shows a result?

    • consequently
    • in addition
    • although

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