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Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Literature

RL.9-10.7: One Subject in Two Artistic Mediums

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7 · Cluster: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas.

All 41 Grades 9–10 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).

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

What RL.9-10.7 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders set two versions of one subject side by side, a poem and a painting, or a novel and its film, and ask what each puts at the center and what it leaves out. Auden’s poem about Breughel’s Icarus is the classic pairing.

In 8th grade (RL.8.7) students judged how faithfully a film or staged version followed its text. Grades 9 and 10 ask instead what each version stresses and omits. In grades 11 and 12 (RL.11-12.7) students evaluate several interpretations of one work, with at least one Shakespeare play among them.

RL.9-10.7 I Can Statements

  • I can describe what a painting or film puts at its center.
  • I can name what each version of a scene leaves out.
  • I can explain how two mediums give one subject different meanings.

RL.9-10.7 Worked Example

An original poem and a description of an invented painting, both showing the same evening: the last train on a closing country line.

Read the Story
The poem, “Last Run”: I swept the platform one more time. / I wound the clock no one will read. / The lamp went green. The rails went still. / I locked the door. I kept the key.The painting, “Farewell at the Halt,” as a viewer sees it: red and gold bunting across the station roof, a brass band in the foreground, and children on their fathers’ shoulders waving flags at the departing train, its smoke bright against an evening sky.In the far left corner, almost hidden by a flag, a small dark figure stands in a doorway with something in his hand.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Both works show the last train on the line. What does each one emphasize, and what does each leave out?
Not Yet“The poem is sad and the painting is happy. They are both about a train leaving.”It names a mood for each but never says what each medium puts in the center, what it pushes to the edge, or what that difference does to the meaning of the event.
Meets the Standard“The painting puts the crowd at the center: bunting, a brass band, children ‘waving flags at the departing train.’ The closing becomes a public celebration, and the man who ran the station is ‘almost hidden by a flag.’ The poem reverses the frame. The crowd and the band are absent, the train appears only as ‘The rails went still,’ and every line is one man’s last task: sweeping, winding ‘the clock no one will read,’ locking up. Read together, the painting’s small figure with ‘something in his hand’ is the poem’s speaker, and the thing in his hand is the key. Each work leaves out what the other shows, so the loss is invisible in one and the whole subject of the other.”It says what each medium foregrounds and what it leaves out, quotes both, and explains what the difference in emphasis does to the meaning of one event.
Question Stems to Use
What does each work put at the center of the frame?Who or what is missing from each version?What can the painting show that the poem cannot, and the reverse?How does each medium make you feel about the same event?Why might an artist make the most important figure small?

Common Mistakes with RL.9-10.7

Comparing moods, not emphasis

“The poem is sad and the painting is happy.”

Try this: Ask what sits at the center of each work and what is pushed to the edge, before anyone names a mood.

Reading the painting as decoration

Students analyze the poem closely and treat the painting as an illustration of it

Try this: Have students annotate the painting as closely as the poem: placement, size, color and what the viewer’s eye meets first.

Overlooking what is absent

Lists everything in each work and nothing that is missing

Try this: Add an “absent” row to the comparison chart and require one thing each work leaves out, with its effect on meaning.

Where RL.9-10.7 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.8.7Judge how faithfully a film or live production follows the text, and the choices it makes.
AlongsideRI.9-10.7Analyze accounts of one subject told in different mediums, like print and multimedia.SL.9-10.2Integrate information presented in diverse media and formats.
Comes NextRL.11-12.7Evaluate how several productions or recordings interpret one source text.

Practice RL.9-10.7

Quick Check

  1. What does the speaker of the poem do with the key?
  2. What is at the center of the painting?
  3. Where is the man in the doorway in the painting?

RL.9-10.7: Other Names

RL.9-10.7CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7

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.