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Common Core ELAGrades 11–12Reading: Informational

RI.11-12.9: Founding Documents and Their Rhetoric

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.9 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

All 41 Grades 11–12 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.11-12.9 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors read founding American documents from the 1600s to the 1800s for their themes, their purposes and the rhetoric that serves both. The Preamble’s phrase the People of the United States replaced a draft that named all thirteen states one by one.

Ninth and tenth grade (RI.9-10.9) traced shared themes across seminal U.S. documents like the Gettysburg Address. Grades 11-12 return to the founding texts and ask how their words did political work. This is the last band of the line, where reading meets college and career readiness.

RI.11-12.9 I Can Statements

  • I can state the purpose a founding document served in its time.
  • I can trace a theme through a founding document’s key phrases.
  • I can explain how a rhetorical choice serves the document’s purpose.

RI.11-12.9 Worked Example

The passage sets the Preamble beside the draft it replaced and the Articles of Confederation, and the weak answer never asks why the words changed.

Read the Story
The Articles of Confederation, in force from 1781: “The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other.”An August 1787 draft of the Constitution opened “We the people of the States of” and then named all thirteen, from New Hampshire to Georgia.The Preamble as signed in September 1787: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”Commentary: The final wording, credited to Gouverneur Morris of the Committee of Style, did two things the draft did not. It replaced a list of states with a single people, and it gave that people six reasons. Dropping the list also solved a practical problem: the Constitution would take effect once nine states ratified it, and no one knew which nine.Commentary: The phrase “a more perfect Union” quietly admits that the existing union, the league of friendship, had failed, without ever saying so.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What are the Preamble’s purpose and central theme, and how do its rhetorical choices, set beside the draft and the Articles, serve them?
Not Yet“The Preamble lists the purposes of the Constitution, like establishing justice and promoting the general welfare. Its theme is freedom, because it talks about the Blessings of Liberty.”It repeats the goals the Preamble names but never analyzes the document’s own purpose or its rhetoric. It ignores the two earlier texts, so it misses that the opening words were chosen against something.
Meets the Standard“The Preamble’s purpose is to say who creates the new government and why, and its theme is union: one people instead of a league of states. Its rhetoric serves that. The Articles made the states the actors in ‘a firm league of friendship,’ and the August draft still began ‘We the people of the States of.’ The final text makes ‘the People of the United States’ the single speaker, which also dodged the problem that no one knew which nine states would ratify. The six purposes then rise in a list that ends on ‘our Posterity,’ turning a legal opening into a promise to future generations. And ‘a more perfect Union’ admits, politely, that the league had not worked.”It states a purpose and a theme, uses the earlier texts to show what the wording was chosen against, and ties three rhetorical features, the speaker, the list and one loaded phrase, to that purpose.
Question Stems to Use
Who is speaking in this document, and who is being addressed?What problem or earlier text was this document written against?Which phrase carries the document’s central theme most clearly?How does the sentence’s structure, its list, order and rhythm, serve its purpose?What does a single word choice reveal that the authors never say outright?

Common Mistakes with RI.11-12.9

Summarizing instead of analyzing

“The Preamble lists six goals of the Constitution.”

Try this: Ask students why each listed goal was needed in 1787, then have them connect one goal to a failure of the Articles.

Reading the document out of its time

“We the People means everyone in America was included.”

Try this: Place the document beside what came before it and what its authors argued over, so students read its words as choices made in 1787.

Naming devices without purpose

“The Preamble uses parallelism.”

Try this: Require each rhetorical feature to be paired with the purpose it serves and the earlier wording it improved on or replaced.

Where RI.11-12.9 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.9-10.9Analyze seminal U.S. documents and how they address related themes and concepts.
AlongsideRH.11-12.5Analyze how a complex primary source is structured and how its parts build the whole.RL.11-12.9Read foundational American literature from the same centuries and compare how works treat a theme.
Comes NextW.11-12.9Draw evidence from foundational U.S. documents to support analysis in writing.SL.11-12.1Discuss founding texts in seminar, citing evidence and airing every position.

Practice RI.11-12.9

Quick Check

  1. How did the August 1787 draft begin, and what replaced it?
  2. What practical problem did dropping the list of states solve?
  3. What does “a more perfect Union” imply about the Articles of Confederation?

RI.11-12.9: Other Names

RI.11-12.9CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.9

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.