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Common Core ELA7th GradeReading: Informational

RI.7.6: The Author’s Position and How It Stands Apart

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.6 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 7th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author distinguishes his or her position from that of others.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 7, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.7.6 Means in Plain English

Seventh graders find where an author stands on a nonfiction topic and how the author marks that stand off from other people’s. A writer on invasive lionfish might reject both the fishers who promise to wipe them out and the critics who call removal pointless.

Sixth graders (RI.6.6) found an author’s point of view or purpose and where it shows. Seventh grade adds the others in the room: whose views the author describes, and the words that set the author apart. Eighth grade (RI.8.6) looks at how authors answer conflicting evidence or viewpoints.

RI.7.6 I Can Statements

  • I can state an author’s position on a topic in one sentence.
  • I can identify the other views an author describes.
  • I can explain how the author sets that position apart from others.

RI.7.6 Worked Example

The author describes two other camps before taking a third position, and the weak answer mistakes one of those camps for the author.

Read the Story
Lionfish, with their striped bodies and long, venomous spines, are native to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Since the 1980s they have spread along the Atlantic coast of the United States, through the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico. Few predators there will eat them, and they eat young reef fish in huge numbers.Some fishing groups promise that spearfishing contests can wipe lionfish out. That will not happen. A single female can release about two million eggs a year, and lionfish live deeper than most divers can go.Other people argue that since lionfish can never be removed, hunting them is a waste of time. I disagree with them too.Studies on individual reefs show that when divers remove lionfish regularly, native fish begin to recover. We cannot clear the ocean, but we can protect the reefs that matter most, one reef at a time.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What is the author’s position on hunting lionfish, and how does the author set it apart from the two other views in the passage?
Not Yet“The author thinks hunting lionfish is a waste of time, because they lay two million eggs a year and live too deep for divers.”That is the second group’s view, and the author rejects it. The student read the evidence against the contests and took it as the author’s case against hunting altogether.
Meets the Standard“The author thinks lionfish hunting is worth doing reef by reef, even though it can never clear them from the ocean. The author breaks from the contest groups with ‘That will not happen’ and backs it with the two million eggs and the deep water. Then the author turns on the other side, the people who call hunting ‘a waste of time,’ with ‘I disagree with them too,’ and uses the reef studies to show removal works where it is kept up.”It states the position precisely, names both other views, quotes the words where the author breaks from each, and shows which evidence is aimed at which group.
Question Stems to Use
Whose views does the author describe besides the author’s own?Where does the author break from that view? Quote the words.Which evidence is aimed at which group?How is the author’s position different from both other views?Which phrases signal that the author is about to disagree?

Common Mistakes with RI.7.6

Mistaking a described view for the author’s

“The author thinks hunting lionfish is a waste of time.”

Try this: Have students tag every opinion in the text with whose it is, the author or someone else, before stating the author’s position.

A position with no edges

“The author thinks lionfish are a problem.”

Try this: Ask what the author would say to each of the other groups, then fold both answers into one sentence stating the position.

Missing the signal words

An answer that never quotes where the author turns against a view

Try this: Collect turn phrases like “That will not happen” and “I disagree” on a class chart, and have students hunt for them first.

Where RI.7.6 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.6.6Determine an author’s point of view or purpose and explain how it comes through in the text.
AlongsideW.7.1Write arguments that acknowledge opposing claims, the same move from the writer’s side.RL.7.6Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators.
Comes NextRI.8.6Analyze how an author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.

Practice RI.7.6

Quick Check

  1. What is the author’s position on hunting lionfish?
  2. What evidence does the author use against the contest groups?
  3. Which sentence shows the author also rejects the view that hunting is a waste of time?

RI.7.6: Other Names

RI.7.6CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.6

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.