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9th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 9 of 14

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.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 9-10W2; 9-10L3 · choosing a form and tone for the audience

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 New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 9 of 14 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: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

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

    During the “revise” step of the writing process, you…

    • only fix commas
    • improve the ideas, organization and wording
    • choose the title font

  2. Question 2

    Which form would best share your opinion on a school rule?

    • a recipe
    • an editorial or letter to the editor
    • a timeline

  3. Question 3

    Which sentence has the most formal tone?

    • Gym Friday?? Pls!!
    • I would like to request permission to use the gym on Friday.
    • Hey, can we use the gym Friday?

  4. Question 4

    Which form best explains the steps for building a bird feeder?

    • a diary entry
    • a sonnet
    • a how-to guide

  5. Question 5

    Which of these is part of mechanics in writing?

    • the topic
    • the main idea
    • capital letters and punctuation

  6. Question 6

    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

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