Mississippi Standards
Mississippi English I ELA Standards
All 41 Mississippi English language arts standards for English I, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Mississippi Department of Education's document, linked at the end of this page.
41 standards
Reading Literature
9 standardsRL.9.1
Support a reading of a novel, play or poem with strong, thorough quotations, covering both what it states outright and what you infer from it.
RL.9.2
Identify one or more themes in a literary text, trace how details work together to build and refine them, and write an accurate summary from that analysis.
RL.9.3
Analyze how complex characters, like one torn between loyalty and ambition, change across a text, interact with others, and drive the plot or theme.
RL.9.4
Work out figurative and connotative meanings in a literary text and analyze how word choices create tone or a sense of time and place, like formal or casual.
RL.9.5
Explain how a writer's structure, like parallel plots, flashbacks or a slowed-down scene, builds mystery, tension or surprise in a story.
RL.9.6
Analyze the viewpoint or cultural experience in a work from outside the United States, like a novel by Chinua Achebe, drawing on your wider reading of world literature.
RL.9.7
Compare how a poem and a painting, or a novel and its film, treat the same scene or subject, noting what each one stresses and what each leaves out.
RL.9.9
Trace how a specific work borrows and reworks an older source, like Shakespeare drawing on Ovid or West Side Story reshaping Romeo and Juliet.
RL.9.10
By the end of ninth grade, read and understand stories, plays and poems in the grades 9 and 10 range, with support on the most complex ones.
Reading Informational Text
10 standardsRI.9.1
Support a reading of a novel, play or poem with strong, thorough quotations, covering both what it states outright and what you infer from it.
RI.9.2
Identify one or more central ideas in a nonfiction text, analyze how details combine to build and sharpen them, and write an accurate summary.
RI.9.3
Explain how a nonfiction writer unfolds an argument or a chain of events, including the order of the points, how each is introduced and how they connect.
RI.9.4
Work out figurative, connotative and technical meanings in nonfiction, and explain how word choices add up to a tone, like a court opinion beside a news story.
RI.9.5
Show in detail how particular sentences, paragraphs or a whole chapter build and sharpen a nonfiction author's ideas or claims.
RI.9.6
Pin down an author's purpose or stance and analyze the rhetoric that pushes it, like repetition, appeals to emotion or a pointed question.
RI.9.7
Compare accounts of the same subject in different media, like a biography and a documentary about the same person, and say which details each one stresses.
RI.9.8
Map out a text's argument and claims, judge whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence relevant and sufficient, and flag false statements and logical fallacies.
RI.9.9
Analyze seminal U.S. documents, like the Gettysburg Address and King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, and how they take up related themes such as freedom and equality.
RI.9.10
By the end of ninth grade, read and understand literary nonfiction, like memoirs and speeches, in the grades 9 and 10 range, with support on the hardest pieces.
Writing
10 standardsW.9.1
Argue a substantive topic or text in writing with a precise claim, a counterclaim weighed for its strengths and limits, linked sections, a formal tone and a close.
W.9.2
Write clear informative essays that organize complex ideas, back them with facts, quotes and visuals, link sections smoothly, keep a formal tone, and end with a strong conclusion.
W.9.3
Write a story that opens on a problem, sets up a narrator and point of view, weaves dialogue, pacing and more than one plot line, and closes with a reflection.
W.9.4
Match how a piece of writing is developed, organized and styled to its task, its purpose and the people who will read it.
W.9.5
Strengthen drafts through planning, revision, editing, rewriting or a whole new approach, centering on what matters most for the reader and purpose.
W.9.6
Write, publish and keep updating a piece online, alone or with a group, using links and flexible displays like an embedded chart or an expandable section.
W.9.7
Run short and longer research projects on a question you pose or are given, narrowing or widening it as needed and weaving several sources into one account.
W.9.8
Use advanced searches to find authoritative print and online sources, judge how useful each is to your question, and weave them in selectively with MLA or APA citations.
W.9.9
Use evidence from stories and informational texts in writing, like details that show a character in depth or the reasons an author gives for a point.
W.9.10
Write regularly for many tasks, purposes and audiences, from a research paper drafted and revised over weeks to a response finished in a single sitting or a day or two.
Speaking and Listening
6 standardsSL.9.1
Start and join discussions on grades 9 and 10 topics prepared with evidence, set group rules, link talk to bigger ideas, draw others in, and weigh differing views.
SL.9.2
Pull together information from a chart, a podcast and an article on one topic, and judge how credible and accurate each source is.
SL.9.3
Weigh a speaker's stance, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric, and catch a logical fallacy, an exaggerated statistic or a quotation twisted out of context.
SL.9.4
Present findings and evidence clearly and concisely in an order listeners can follow, with organization, depth and style suited to the purpose, audience and task.
SL.9.5
Choose digital media for a presentation strategically, like a chart for data or a short audio clip, where each one makes the reasoning clearer or adds interest.
SL.9.6
Shape speech to fit the setting and task, switching into confident formal English when it is called for, like during a practice job interview.
Language
6 standardsL.9.1
Print many letters, use everyday nouns, verbs and little words like in and on, make plurals like dogs and wishes, ask with who and where, and speak in full sentences.
L.9.2
Capitalize the first word of a sentence and the word I, name the period and question mark, and spell simple words the way they sound, like kat for cat.
L.9.3
Notice how language works differently in a lab report, a poem and a speech, and write and edit to a style manual such as the MLA Handbook when the task calls for one.
L.9.4
Work out unfamiliar and multiple-meaning words in grades 9 and 10 reading using context, Greek and Latin roots, print or digital references, and checking each guess.
L.9.5
Explain a nonliteral phrase like take steps, name someone who is friendly to link a word to real life, and rank knew, believed and suspected by how sure they are.
L.9.6
Build and use the academic and subject-specific vocabulary needed for college and career reading and writing, looking up on your own any word that matters to an idea.
The official Mississippi documents
- 2025 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for English Language Arts · adopted 2025 · required since 2025-26
The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Mississippi's standards, not the official wording, which Mississippi Department of Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.