Grade 6 · Comprehension: Understanding and Responding to Texts · Text Forms, Media, and Style

Analyze How a Text Works

Readers understand more when they examine not only what a text says but how its form, visual design, language, and narrator shape the message.

The big idea

Every feature is a choice

A first-person diary creates closeness to one person's experience, while a timeline organizes events across time and may reveal a broader historical pattern.

Work it through

Compare two accounts of one event

1. Identify each form and its usual characteristics.
2. Compare which details the words and visuals emphasize.
3. Notice voice, word choice, sentence structure, and point of view.
4. Explain how an alternative point of view would change what the audience understands.

For parents and educators

Ontario curriculum alignment

Grade 6 Language · Strand C: Comprehension: Understanding and Responding to Texts

View supported expectations

C1.2 · Text Forms and Genres

Analyze a variety of text forms and genres, including cultural text forms, and explain how their characteristics help communicate meaning.
C1.4 · Visual Elements of Texts

Analyze and compare how images, graphics, and visual design create, communicate, and contribute to meaning in a variety of texts.
C1.5 · Elements of Style

Identify various elements of style in texts, including voice, word choice, word patterns, and sentence structure, and analyze how each element helps create meaning and is appropriate for the text form and genre.
C1.6 · Point of View

Identify the narrator's point of view, including first, second, or third person, in a variety of texts, providing evidence, and explain how using an alternative point of view would change each story.