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Common Core ELA6th GradeReading: Informational

RI.6.10: Read Grade 6 to 8 Literary Nonfiction

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.10 · Cluster: Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity.

All 41 6th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in the grades 6-8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 6, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.6.10 Means in Plain English

By year’s end, sixth graders read literary nonfiction, true writing told like a story, at the grades 6 to 8 level. A narrative about the 1859 solar storm uses metaphors and long sentences. Students keep the facts straight underneath them, with support on the hardest texts.

Fifth graders (RI.5.10) read history, science and technical texts at the top of the grades 4 to 5 band on their own. Sixth grade moves up a band to literary nonfiction like memoirs and speeches. Seventh grade (RI.7.10) stays in this band, and eighth graders read it alone.

RI.6.10 I Can Statements

  • I can follow a true story told with metaphors and long sentences.
  • I can retell a hard paragraph accurately in my own words.
  • I can tell a figure of speech from a literal fact.

RI.6.10 Worked Example

Literary nonfiction asks the reader to enjoy the telling and keep the facts straight at the same time, and the weak answer loses the facts.

Read the Story
On the morning of September 1, 1859, an English astronomer named Richard Carrington was sketching dark spots on the sun when two beads of blinding white light swelled on its face, burned for about five minutes and faded.He had no way of knowing that the sun had just hurled a vast cloud of charged particles toward Earth, or that it would arrive in less than a day.That night the sky caught fire. Auroras, usually seen only near the poles, rippled red and green as far south as Cuba, and in the Rocky Mountains, gold miners woke in the glow, sure it was dawn, and started cooking breakfast.Telegraph lines, the internet of their day, crackled with current no one had sent. Sparks leapt from the equipment, and between Boston and Portland, Maine, operators unhooked their batteries and kept sending messages on the storm’s power alone.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: The last paragraph says operators “kept sending messages on the storm’s power alone.” What does that mean, and how does the rest of the passage explain it?
Not Yet“There was a big thunderstorm that night, and the lightning gave the telegraph wires extra power.”The passage never mentions weather. The reader filled the word storm with its everyday meaning and missed the chain the text builds from the flare to the charged particles to the current in the wires.
Meets the Standard“It means so much electric current from the solar storm was running through the telegraph lines that operators could disconnect their own batteries and still send messages. The storm began with the flare Carrington saw, when the sun ‘hurled a vast cloud of charged particles toward Earth.’ When the cloud arrived that night, it lit the sky with auroras and filled the lines with ‘current no one had sent.’”It turns the figurative line into plain words and traces the cause back through the passage, keeping the true events separate from the vivid language around them.
Question Stems to Use
Which sentence was hardest? Say it again in your own words.Is this phrase literal or figurative? How do you know?What caused this? Find the earlier sentence that explains it.What does “it” refer to in this sentence?What happened first, next and last, in the order it really happened?

Common Mistakes with RI.6.10

Taking figurative language literally

“The sky caught fire, so the forests were burning.”

Try this: Have students mark each vivid phrase and write what actually happened beside it before answering any question about the passage.

Losing the thread of cause and effect

An answer that treats the auroras and the telegraph sparks as two unrelated events

Try this: Ask students to draw the chain from the flare to the sparks as arrows, with a quoted line under each arrow.

Skimming past the hardest sentence

A summary that skips the paragraph about the charged particles because it was confusing

Try this: Stop at the densest sentence, have partners paraphrase it aloud and reread until both versions match the text, then keep reading.

Where RI.6.10 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.5.10Read grade 4 to 5 history, science and technical texts independently by year’s end.
AlongsideRL.6.10Read stories, plays and poems in the same grades 6 to 8 band, with the same support.RH.6-8.10Build toward reading grades 6 to 8 history texts independently by the end of 8th grade.
Comes NextRI.7.10Read 7th-grade literary nonfiction in the same band, with support on the hardest texts.

Practice RI.6.10

Quick Check

  1. What did Richard Carrington see on September 1, 1859?
  2. Why did gold miners in the Rocky Mountains start cooking breakfast?
  3. Does “the sky caught fire” mean something was burning? Explain.

RI.6.10: Other Names

RI.6.10CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.10

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.