RL.6.7: Reading a Story Versus Hearing or Watching It
Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.7 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.
The Official Wording
Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they "see" and "hear" when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch.
Common Core State Standards, Grade 6, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026
What RL.6.7 Means in Plain English
Sixth graders read a story, play or poem, then hear or watch a performance of it, and compare the two experiences. On the page they build the creature in their heads. On screen the director picks it for them, and students explain what that choice adds or takes away.
In 5th grade (RL.5.7) students analyzed what visuals and multimedia add to a story’s meaning, tone or beauty. Sixth grade compares the act of reading with the act of listening or watching. In 7th grade (RL.7.7) students analyze techniques unique to each medium, like lighting, sound and camera angles.
RL.6.7 I Can Statements
- I can describe what I picture and hear while reading a scene.
- I can describe what an audio or film version gives me instead.
- I can explain how each version changes my experience of the story.
RL.6.7 Worked Example
One moment from a ghost story in three versions, the printed page, an audiobook and a film, with a question about what each lets the audience imagine.
On the page: “Something dragged along the porch boards, slow, the way a branch drags when the wind isn’t blowing. Nell did not go to the window. She counted the scrapes instead. Seven.”In the audiobook: no music, only the scrape, a little louder each time, and the narrator’s voice dropping to a whisper on “Seven.”In the film: the camera cuts to the porch in full moonlight. A raccoon drags a broken branch past the door, and the music swells, then stops.
Common Mistakes with RL.6.7
Ranking instead of comparing
“The movie was way better.”
Try this: Replace “Which was better?” with “What did each version make you imagine, and what did it decide for you?”
Comparing content, not experience
“In the movie it’s a raccoon, and in the book it doesn’t say.”
Try this: Ask students to describe how they felt at the same moment in each version, then trace that feeling to a choice.
Watching before reading
The class watches the film first and can’t picture the scene any other way
Try this: Have students read the text and sketch or jot what they imagine before the class hears or watches any version.
Where RL.6.7 Fits
Practice RL.6.7
Quick Check
- What does Nell do instead of going to the window?
- What does the audiobook add that the page doesn’t have?
- What does the film show that the page never does?