Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Informational

RI.9-10.3: How an Author Unfolds a Series of Events

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.3 · Cluster: Key Ideas and Details.

The Official Wording

Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 9-10, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.9-10.3 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders study the way a nonfiction writer lays out a chain of events or ideas: what comes first, how each step is introduced, and which words tie one step to the next. A blackout story might open with the dark city and only then go back.

Eighth grade (RI.8.3) analyzed how a text connects and distinguishes people, ideas and events through comparisons and categories. Ninth and tenth grade add why the writer puts the points in this order. Eleventh and twelfth grade (RI.11-12.3) follow a complex set of ideas as they interact and develop.

RI.9-10.3 I Can Statements

I can explain why an author presents events in this order.
I can describe how an author introduces a key event.
I can name the connections an author draws between events.

RI.9-10.3 Worked Example

The passage starts with the outcome and doubles back to a quiet cause, and the weak answer reads it as a simple timeline.

Read the Story

Just after 4 p.m. on August 14, 2003, about 50 million people in eight states and the Canadian province of Ontario lost power within minutes. Subway trains stopped between stations, and traffic lights went dark across New York City.The trouble had started two hours earlier, in a utility control room in Ohio, and it began with silence. A software flaw froze the alarm system, so the screens that should have flashed warnings stayed calm, and no one in the room knew they had stopped working.That afternoon, high-voltage lines carrying heavy loads in the summer heat grew hot and sagged. One after another, three of them touched trees that had been allowed to grow too tall beneath them and shut off.Each line that dropped out pushed its electricity onto the lines that remained, which overheated in turn. Because the operators still saw no alarms, they did not cut power to some customers, the step that might have contained the damage.By the time the cascade reached other utilities, it was moving faster than any person could react. A failure no one could see had become one everyone could.

A short passage written for this page.

Question: How does the author unfold this series of events? Explain why the passage begins where it does, how the alarm failure is introduced, and what connections the author draws between the events.

Not Yet“The author tells the story in time order. First the power went out, then the alarms broke, then the lines hit trees, then everything failed.”It calls the order chronological when the passage opens at the end and jumps back two hours, and it strings events together with “then” instead of naming the cause-and-effect links the author builds.

Meets the Standard“The author opens with the result, 50 million people in the dark, so the reader starts by asking how. Then the passage jumps back two hours and introduces the alarm failure as ‘silence,’ a quiet cause set against a loud outcome. The next paragraphs link each event to the one before: heat made the lines sag, the sagging lines touched trees, each line that ‘dropped out pushed its electricity onto the lines that remained,’ and ‘because the operators still saw no alarms,’ no one stopped the spread. The last line ties the ends together: a failure no one could see became one everyone could.”It explains the order (result first, then a flashback), how the key event is introduced, and the specific connecting words that turn a list of events into a chain of causes.

Question Stems to Use

Where does the text begin in time? Why might the author start there?How is this event introduced? What word or image announces it?Which words connect one event to the next: because, so, in turn?Did this event cause the next one, or only come before it?How does the last sentence connect back to the first?

Common Mistakes with RI.9-10.3

Assuming the text runs in time order

“First the power went out, then the alarms broke.”

Try this: Have students number events in the order they happened, then in the order the author tells them, and explain every difference.

Listing events without the links

A string of “then” sentences that never says one event caused another

Try this: Ban “then” in the first draft so students must name each connection: because, which caused, in turn, or simply came before.

Ignoring how an event is introduced

“The alarms broke,” with no word on why the author calls it silence

Try this: Ask students to quote the sentence that first introduces each key event and explain what the author’s framing makes the reader expect.

Where RI.9-10.3 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.8.3Analyze how a text connects and distinguishes individuals, ideas or events through comparisons and categories.

AlongsideRH.9-10.3Decide whether earlier events in a history text caused later ones or simply came before them.W.9-10.2Organize complex ideas in explanatory writing so each connection is clear.

Comes NextRI.11-12.3Explain how a complex set of ideas or events interact and develop over a text.

Practice RI.9-10.3

Quick Check

Why does the author open with 50 million people losing power?
To start with the outcome so the reader wants to know how it happened, before the passage jumps back two hours to the cause.
How does the author introduce the alarm failure?
As “silence”: a frozen alarm system that left the screens calm, a quiet cause set against a huge result.
Which connection explains why the failures spread?
Each line that dropped out pushed its electricity onto the remaining lines, which overheated in turn, and because operators saw no alarms, nobody acted to contain it.

RI.9-10.3: Other Names

RI.9-10.3CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.3