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Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Informational

RI.9-10.9: Seminal U.S. Documents and Shared Themes

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.9 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

All 41 Grades 9–10 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington's Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"), including how they address related themes and concepts.

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

What RI.9-10.9 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders read the documents that shaped the country, from Washington’s Farewell Address to King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, and trace how they take up shared themes like equality. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments borrows the Declaration of Independence’s words to make a new claim.

Eighth grade (RI.8.9) analyzed texts that give conflicting information on one topic. Ninth and tenth grade move to seminal U.S. documents and the themes they share across centuries. Eleventh and twelfth grade (RI.11-12.9) study foundational documents from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries for their themes, purposes and rhetorical features.

RI.9-10.9 I Can Statements

  • I can explain why a document matters in U.S. history.
  • I can trace a shared theme across two founding documents.
  • I can explain what a later document gains by echoing an earlier one.

RI.9-10.9 Worked Example

The second document borrows the first one’s most famous sentences and changes a few words, and the weak answer calls it copying.

Read the Story
Text 1, from the Declaration of Independence (1776): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”Text 1: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”Text 2, from the Declaration of Sentiments, adopted at the women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York (1848): “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”Text 2: “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.”Text 2, its first grievance: “He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.”
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Text 2 borrows the language of Text 1. How does each document address the theme of equal rights, and what does Text 2 achieve by echoing Text 1 so closely?
Not Yet“Both documents are about freedom and equality. Text 2 copies Text 1 but adds women.”It names a shared theme but treats the borrowing as copying, missing the argument the echo makes: if the founders’ principles are self-evident, they must cover women too, and men now stand where the king stood.
Meets the Standard“Both texts call equal rights ‘self-evident’ and given by a ‘Creator,’ so no government grants them and none may take them away. Text 1 uses that principle to justify breaking from a king. Text 2 adds two words, ‘and women,’ and turns the nation’s founding argument on the nation itself. Its second sentence keeps the shape of the charge against the king but puts ‘man’ where ‘the present King of Great Britain’ stood and ‘her’ where ‘these States’ stood, so men now play the tyrant. By echoing so closely, Text 2 makes it hard to reject its claims without rejecting the Declaration of Independence, and its first grievance, the right to vote, names the kind of representation the founders had demanded for themselves.”It identifies the shared theme, explains how each document uses it for its own purpose, and analyzes the specific words borrowed and changed as an argument in themselves.
Question Stems to Use
What words does Text 2 keep from Text 1? What words does it change?Who plays the tyrant in each text?What theme do both documents address? How does each use it?Why might the writers of Text 2 copy the form of a famous document?Could a reader accept Text 1 and reject Text 2? What would that require?

Common Mistakes with RI.9-10.9

Calling the echo copying

“Text 2 just copied the Declaration and added women.”

Try this: Have students list each change between the paired sentences, word by word, and explain what argument each change makes.

Naming a theme without the concept behind it

“Both are about equality.”

Try this: Push past the one-word theme by asking what each text claims about where rights come from and who must respect them.

Ignoring the historical setting

Discussing both texts as if they were written in the same year for the same readers

Try this: Give each document a one-line context card, who wrote it, when and for whom, and require students to use it in their analysis.

Where RI.9-10.9 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.8.9Analyze texts that give conflicting information on one topic and pinpoint the disagreement.
AlongsideRH.9-10.9Compare treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.RL.9-10.9Trace how an author draws on and transforms source material from an earlier work.
Comes NextRI.11-12.9Analyze foundational documents like the Preamble and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural for theme, purpose and rhetoric.

Practice RI.9-10.9

Quick Check

  1. Which two words does Text 2 add to the most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence?
  2. In Text 2’s second sentence, who replaces the king as the tyrant?
  3. What does Text 2 gain by echoing Text 1 so closely?

RI.9-10.9: Other Names

RI.9-10.9CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9-10.9

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.