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Common Core ELA4th GradeReading: Literature

RL.4.5: How Poems, Plays and Prose Differ

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 43 4th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 4, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.4.5 Means in Plain English

Fourth graders explain how poems, plays and prose differ, and they use the right terms to do it. Poems come in verse, lines with rhythm and often a regular beat called meter. Plays have a cast list, settings, dialogue and stage directions. Prose runs in sentences and paragraphs.

In 3rd grade (RL.3.5) students named the parts of a text, like chapters, scenes and stanzas, and how each builds on the last. Fourth grade compares whole forms. In 5th grade (RL.5.5) students explain how those chapters, scenes or stanzas fit together into the structure of a whole text.

RL.4.5 I Can Statements

  • I can tell whether a text is a poem, a play or prose.
  • I can point out verse, rhythm and meter in a poem.
  • I can find the cast, setting and stage directions in a play.

RL.4.5 Worked Example

One rooster, one dawn, three forms. The events barely change, so the differences in structure stand out.

Read the Story
Prose: At five in the morning, the rooster on the fence post let out a crow so loud that Tobias rolled off the top bunk and landed in his sneakers.Poem: The rooster climbs the fence post high / and shouts the sun into the sky. / He flaps his wings and fluffs his chest, / and no one in the house can rest.Play: (A farmhouse bedroom at dawn. TOBIAS, nine, is asleep on the top bunk. Outside the window, a rooster crows.)TOBIAS (pulling the pillow over his head): Make it stop.GRANDMA (opening the curtains wide): He’s only doing his job, sweetheart. Yours starts in ten minutes.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: All three versions tell the same moment. What does the poem do that the prose doesn’t, and what does the play do that neither of the others does? Use the terms for each form.
Not Yet“The poem rhymes and the play has people talking.”It notices one feature of two forms but uses none of the terms the standard asks for, and the prose never comes into it. People talk in stories too.
Meets the Standard“The prose tells the moment in a full sentence, with a narrator saying what happens. The poem is written in verse: four lines that rhyme in pairs, each with the same rhythm, da-DUM four times, which is its meter. The play has no narrator. It names its cast in capitals, sets the scene in a stage direction, and gives the dialogue after each speaker’s name, with directions like ‘pulling the pillow over his head’ telling the actor what to do.”It uses the structural terms for each form, verse, rhythm, meter, cast, setting, dialogue and stage directions, and points to where each one appears in the text.
Question Stems to Use
Is this text written in sentences, in lines of verse or as a script?Where do the lines of the poem break, and which words rhyme?Clap the beats in one line. Does every line have the same number?Who is in the cast, and where does the scene take place?Which words in the play are said aloud, and which tell the actors what to do?

Common Mistakes with RL.4.5

Rhyme as the only sign of a poem

“It’s not a poem because it doesn’t rhyme.”

Try this: Show unrhymed poems too, and have students prove a text is a poem from its line breaks and rhythm, not rhyme alone.

Reading stage directions aloud as lines

Reads “pulling the pillow over his head, make it stop” as Tobias’s line

Try this: Have students highlight everything in parentheses in one color and act it out silently while a partner reads only the spoken words.

Mixing up rhythm and rhyme

“The rhythm is high and sky.”

Try this: Clap one line and count its beats, then circle the rhyming words, so students hear that rhythm is the beat and rhyme is matching sounds.

Where RL.4.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.3.5Use terms like chapter, scene and stanza, and explain how each part builds on the last.
AlongsideRL.4.7Connect the text of a play to a staged version of it, following its stage directions.RF.4.4Read prose and poetry aloud with accuracy, a natural pace and expression.
Comes NextRL.5.5Explain how chapters, scenes or stanzas fit together to give a story, play or poem its structure.

Practice RL.4.5

Quick Check

  1. Which words rhyme in the poem?
  2. How many beats does each line of the poem have?
  3. In the play, what tells the reader where and when the scene happens?

RL.4.5: Other Names

RL.4.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5

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.