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The Common Core State Standards
Reading
| College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading K–12 | Source:Common CoreState Standards |
The 3–5 Reading Standards outlined on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. Here on this page we present the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for K-12 so you can see how students in grades 3–5 work toward the same goals as a high school senior: it’s a universal, K-12 vision. The CCR anchor standards and the grade-specific standards correspond to one another by numbers 1–10. They are necessary complements: the former providing broad standards, the latter providing additional specificity. Together, they define the skills and understandings that all students must eventually demonstrate.
Key Ideas and Details
Craft and Structure
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. *
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
Note on Range and Content of Student Reading
To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts. Through extensive reading of stories, dramas, poems, and myths from diverse cultures and different time periods, students gain literary and cultural knowledge as well as familiarity with various text structures and elements. By reading texts in history/social studies, science, and other disciplines, students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas. Students can only gain this foundation when the curriculum is intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades. Students also acquire the habits of reading independently and closely, which are essential to their future success.
Source: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
* Please consult the full Common Core State Standards document (and all updates and appendices) at http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy. See “Research to Build Knowledge” in the Writing section and “Comprehension and Collaboration” in the Speaking and Listening section for additional standards relevant to gathering, assessing, and applying information from print and digital sources.
| College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading K—12 |
The College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards are the same for K-12. The guiding principle here is that the core reading skills should not change as students advance; rather, the level at which they learn and can perform these skills should increase in complexity as students move from one grade to the next. However, for grades 3–5, we have to recognize that the standards were back mapped from the secondary grades—the authors envisioned what college students needed and then wrote standards, working their way down the grades. Thus, as you use this book remember that children in grades 3–5 can’t just “jump over” developmental milestones in an ambitious attempt toward an anchor standard. There are certain life and learning experiences they need to have, and certain concepts they need to learn, before they are capable of handling many complex academic skills in a meaningful way. The anchor standards nonetheless are goal posts to work toward. As you read the “gist” of the standards on the following pages, remember they represent what our 3–5 students will grow into during each year and deepen later in middle school and high school.
Key Ideas and Details
This first strand of reading standards emphasizes students’ ability to identify key ideas and themes in a text, whether literary, informational, primary, or foundational; whether print, graphic, quantitative, or mixed media. The focus of this first set of standards in on reading to understand, during which students focus on what the text says. The premise is that students cannot delve into the deeper (implicit) meaning of any text if they cannot first grasp the surface (explicit) meaning of that text. Beyond merely identifying these ideas, readers must learn to see how these ideas and themes, or the story’s characters and events, develop and evolve over the course of a text. Such reading demands that students know how to identify, evaluate, assess, and analyze the elements of a text for their importance, function, and meaning within the text.
Craft and Structure
The second set of standards builds on the first, focusing not on what the text says but how it says it, the emphasis here being on analyzing how texts are made to serve a function or achieve a purpose. These standards ask readers to examine the choices the author makes in terms of words, sentence, and paragraph structure and how these choices contribute to th meaning of the text and the author’s larger purpose. Inhere] in the study of craft and structure is how these items interac with and influence the ideas and details outlined in the firs three standards.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
This third strand might be summed up as: reading to extend or deepen one’s knowledge of a subject by comparing what a range of sources have said about it over time and across different media. In addition, these standards emphasize the importance of being able to read the arguments; that is, they look at how to identify the claims the texts make and evaluate the evidence used to support those claims regardless of the media. Finally, these standards ask students to analyze the choice of means and medium the author chooses and the effect those choices have on ideas and details. Thus, if a writer integrates words, images, and video in a mixed-media text, readers should be able to examine how and why the author did that in terms of stylistic and rhetorical purposes.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
The Common Core State Standards document itself offers the most useful explanation of what this last standard means in a footnote titled “Note of range and content of student reading,” which accompanies the reading standards:
To become college and career ready, students must grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across genres, cultures, and centuries. Such works offer profound insights into the human condition and serve as models for students’ own thinking and writing. Along with high-quality contemporary works, these texts should be chosen from among seminal U.S. documents, the classics of American literature, and the timeless dramas of Shakespeare. Through wide and deep reading of literature and literary nonfiction of steadily increasing sophistication, students gain a reservoir of literary and cultural knowledge, references, and images; the ability to evaluate intricate arguments; and the capacity to surmount the challenges posed by complex texts. (CCSS, 2010, p. 35)
Source: Adapted from Burke, J. (2013). The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 6–8: What They Say, What They Mean, How to Teach Them. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
| Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standards! | Key Ideas and Details |
Reading 1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
Literature
3 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
4 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
5 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Informational Text
3 Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
4 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
5 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Source: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standard 1
What the Student Does
Literature
3 Gist: Students say what happens in the story or what the poem is about based on evidence from the text. They ask and answer questions of the text to build literal understanding before, during, and after reading.
They consider:
• What happens in the story, play, or poem?
• What is the setting?
• Which words, pictures, and sentences help me know this?
• How can I find the answer to words and sentences that confuse me?
• Which details from the text can I point to in supporting my ideas?
4 Gist: Students explain — either verbally or in written form — the events of the story or what the poem says based on details and examples from the text. They provide specific examples from the text when making inferences.
They consider:
• What happens in this story, play, or poem?
• What is the setting? (time and place)
• What is the author’s central message?
• As I read, which details help me understand what is happening to these characters?
• What inferences can I make and what specific details from the text led me to make each one?
5 Gist: Students explain — either verbally or in written form — the events of the story or what the poem says using specific, accurate quotes directly from the text. Provide quotes from the text to support inferences.
They consider:
• What happens in this story, play, or poem?
• Which specific details are most important?
• What is the setting? (time and place)
• What are the main events in the story or poem?
• What direct, explicit quotes from the text support my understanding of the author’s meaning?
• What direct quotes from the text support my inferences from the text?
Informational Text
3 Gist: Students say what happens in the text or what it’s about based on evidence from the text. Ask and answer questions of the text to build literal understanding before, during, and after.
They consider:
• What happens or is said in this text?
• Which specific details help me understand the main topic?
• How can I look at words, pictures, and headings to help me understand?
• Can I read more slowly, reread, or skim the text to find specific details that support my ideas about the text?
4 Gist: Students explain — either verbally or in written form— what the text is about, providing specific details and examples from the text. Provide specific examples from the text when making inferences.
They consider:
• What is the purpose for reading?
• What is the topic/subject—and what does the text say about that?
• Which specific details are most important?
• What is the setting? (time and place)
• What evidence or examples support what I understand about the text?
• What inferences can I make and what specific details from the text led me to make each one?
5 Gist: Students explain — either verbally or in written form— what the text is about, using specific, accurate quotes directly from the text. Provide quotes from the text to support inferences.
They consider:
• What is the purpose for reading?
• What is the topic/subject—and what does the text say about that?
• Which specific details are most important?
• What is the setting (time and place)?
• What textual evidence supports my account of what the text says?
• What evidence — a detail, quotations, or example — can I cite to support my inference or explanation of the literal meaning of the text?
Common Core Reading Standard 1
What the Teacher Does
To teach students how to “read closely”:
• Think aloud your close reading process as you share fiction and informational short texts and picture books. When reading shared novels as a class, plan ahead a chapter opening or passage you want to model with. Track thinking with sticky notes placed directly on the text, big chart paper and/or highlighting, displaying text on a screen.
• Pose questions about the text’s words, actions, and details that require students to look closely. Don’t do the answering for them!
• Display a text via tablet or computer and ask students to select specific words, sentences, or paragraphs they think are essential; ask students to explain how it contributes to the meaning of the larger text.
• Draw students’ attention to text features and structures, and think aloud how you combine information in these elements to understand the page/section/text as a whole.
• Provide short pieces of text for students to practice “reading closely” for specific purposes.
• Have students respond to their reading and their thinking about texts. This could be accomplished in response journals or other reading notebooks.
To teach students how to ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding:
• Using picture books, ask a question and think aloud how it helped you understand. For example, when a fiction reader muses, “I wonder why she acted that way towards him?” it puts the reader on high alert, looking for the answer in the text. Readers of nonfiction also pose questions when their comprehension falters or as a way to cement understandings, sentence by sentence. For example, “What does hibernation mean? I sort of think it has something to do with winter, but I’ll read on to see if the author explains it.”
• Use chart paper to record students’ questions about a shared text as you read. Then, after reading, go back and answer these questions. Encourage students to pose analytical (how, why) questions along with literal (who, what, where, when) questions. Code if questions were answered literally (L), inferentially (I), or not answered at all (NA).
• Over time, help students grasp that readers pose questions before reading (What’s my purpose for reading this?), during reading (What’s with all the descriptions of sunlight in each chapter?), and after reading (What did the main character finally learn?).
• Have students practice posing questions on their own (independently). Students can annotate on the text where they have questions. Have students share them with a partner or the class.
To develop students’ ability to determine “what the text says explicitly, “refer to details and examples in a text,” and “quote accurately from a text”:
• In a series of lessons and using various texts, write text- dependent questions on sticky notes or annotate in the margins. Model how to find the answers to the questions posed. Annotate in the margins the exact words where questions are answered.
• Provide students with a copy of a sample text and circulate, coaching as they highlight specific details and annotate their thinking. Remind them to “say what it says” — not what they think it means.
• Photocopy and distribute short pieces of text and highlighter markers, and instruct students to highlight sections of the text to show where questions you pose are answered explicitly (or literally). Compare findings as a class.
• Using whiteboards, have students highlight quotes from a text to use as evidence when explaining what the text is about.
• Provide graphic organizers for students to write their questions and then record details, examples, and quotes.
To teach students how to “draw inferences from the text”:
• Choose texts to read aloud and plan where you will model inferring. Think aloud how you make inferences, and tie these inferences back to specific words and phrases in the text.
• Have students use two different colored highlighters to code where information in the text is answered literally or explicitly and another color to show where it’s answered inferentially. Annotate how the text led to inferences.
To help your English language learners, try this:
• Confer with students and have them read aloud a portion of the text. Then stop and have them tell you what questions they have about what they’ve read.
For graphic organizer templates, see online resources at www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion.
| Preparing to Teach: Reading Standard 1 |
Preparing the Classroom
Preparing the Texts to Use
Preparing the Mindset
Preparing to Differentiate
Connections to Other Standards:
Common Core Reading Standard 1
Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases
Cite specific textual evidence: Students should be able to quote a specific passage from the text to support all claims, assertions, or arguments about what a text means or says. Evidence comes from within the text itself, not from the reader’s opinion or experience.
Demonstrate understanding of a text: Readers take a group of details (different findings, series of events, related examples) and draw from them an insight or understanding about their meaning or importance within the passage of the text as a whole.
Drawing inferences: To understand the text by generalizing, deducing, and concluding from reasoning and evidence that is not presented literally or explicitly. These conclusions are based on textual clues.
Explicitly: Clearly stated in great or precise detail; may pertain to factual information or literal meaning, though this is not necessarily always the case.
Informational text: These include nonfiction texts from a range of sources and written for a variety of purposes; everything from essays to advertisements, historical documents to op-ed pieces. Informational texts include written arguments as well as infographics.
Key details: Parts of a text that support the main idea, and enable the reader to draw conclusions and infer what the text or a portion of a text is about.
Literature: Fiction, poetry, drama, graphic stories, but also artworks by distinguished painters, sculptors, or photographers.
Logical inferences (drawn from the text): To infer, readers add what they learned from the text to what they already know about the subject; however, for an inference to be “logical,” it must be based on evidence from the text.
Quote accurately: “Lifting lines” directly from the text or copying specific sections of the text to demonstrate understanding. All claims, assertions, or arguments about what a text means or says require specific examples from the text.
Read closely (aka close reading): Reading that emphasizes not only surface details but the deeper meanings and larger connotations between words, sentences, and the full text; also demands scrutiny of craft, including arguments and style used by the author.
Text: In its broadest meaning, a text is whatever one is trying to read: a poem, essay, drama, story, or article; in its most modern sense, a text can also be an image, an artwork, speech, or multimedia format such as a website, film, or social media message such as a tweet.
Textual evidence: Not all evidence is created equal; students need to choose those pieces of evidence (words, phrases, passages illustrations) that provide the best proof of what they are asserting about the text.
| Preparing to Teach: Reading Standard 1 |
Whole Class
Small Group
Individual Practice/Conferring
| Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standards | Key Ideas and Details |
Reading 2: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Literature
3 Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.
4 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
5 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
Informational Text
3 Determine the main idea of a text, recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
4 Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.
5 Determine two or more main ideas of a text, and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.
Source: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standard 2
What the Student Does
Literature
3 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students identify the central message of the text and determine how key details convey the message, lesson, or moral. Students recount or retell stories, fables, folktales, and myths.
They consider:
• Is this a fable? A folktale? A myth?
• What message, lesson, or moral do the characters learn by the end of the story?
• What specific details am I basing this understanding on?
• What happens in the story?
• What can I say about the beginning, middle, and end so that someone who doesn’t know the story could understand it?
4 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students identify a theme. They examine how an author introduces and develops this theme through details. Students summarize the text.
They consider:
• What is the theme of this text?
• What specific details led me to determine this?
• Where in the text might I look? (High drama scenes? Chapter openings? Final pages of book?)
• Does the author use symbols or repeating language to hint at a theme?
• What does the narrator say that helps me understand a theme?
• What details from the beginning, middle, and end would I include when summarizing this story?
5 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students determine the theme, identifying key ideas, especially how characters respond to challenges in stories and dramas, or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic. Students summarize the text.
They consider:
• What is the theme of this text?
• Where in the text might I look? (High drama scenes? Chapter openings? Final pages of book?)
• Does the author use symbols or repeating language to hint at a theme?
• What key ideas does the author develop throughout the chapters of this text?
• How do characters respond to the challenges they face?
• How might I look at what the main character finally understands for clues?
• What details from the beginning, middle, and end would I include in a summary on this text?
Informational Text
3 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students identify the main idea. They examine how the main idea is supported through key details. Students recount the key details.
They consider:
• What is the main idea of this text?
• What key ideas, specific details, and events help me determine this?
• What details and facts from the text would I include when recounting what the text is about?
4 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students identify the main idea. They examine how an author introduces and develops this idea through key details. Students summarize the text.
They consider:
• What is the main idea of this text?
• What key ideas, specific details, and events help me determine this?
• What details and facts from the text would I include when summarizing what the text is about?
5 Gist: After establishing the text’s explicit meaning, students identify two or more central ideas in a text, examining how they are supported through specific details. Students summarize the text.
They consider:
• What are the main ideas of this text?
• What key ideas does the author develop throughout the text?
• What specific details help me determine this?
• What details and facts from the text would I include when summarizing what the text is about?
Common Core Reading Standard 2
What the Teacher Does
To determine the main idea, central message, lesson, or moral, or theme of a story, drama, or poem:
• Point out common spots for identifying main idea/theme in a text and how you scrutinize specifics (TOC, headings, topic sentences, key events, recurring vocabulary, illustrations) to infer ideas throughout the text. Have students turn and talk whenever you want them to work through a key part where an important idea can be inferred.
• Pose questions that get students looking for theme via the following avenues:
Naming a lesson in the story (What lesson did ___________ learn by the end? What lesson or message did you get from reading this book?)
Identifying a social issue in a story (What have you learned about ___________ from reading this book? What are you learning about the issue of ___________ here?)
• Keep a classroom chart of themes that students discover in texts (with love and understanding, families can overcome loss; accept who you are; bullies lose out; perseverance pays off, and so on).
• After skimming and scanning an informational text, ask students to generate all possible ideas and then determine which of them the text most fully develops.
• Turn topic statements into questions that spur students to read the section for answers (Grey Wolf Habitat to “What is the Grey Wolf’s habitat?”). This will help students learn to “add up” subtopics toward a main idea.
To explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text:
• Model for students how to code specific details in the text that support the central idea or theme.
• Model for students using a shared text which words, phrases, or images recur throughout the text that might signal they are the main idea or central message. Mark, highlight, or annotate these words. After modeling, have students work in groups or independently using the same strategy.
To recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths, from diverse cultures:
• As you read aloud, introduce students to different types of stories, such as realistic stories, adventure stories, fantasy, folktales, fables, and myths. Compare and contrast, and chart their attributes.
• Provide students with a variety of fables, folktales, and myths. Have students work in small groups to study a type in depth and share knowledge with class (e.g., Cinderella stories, Greek myths, American tall tales).
• Model how to recount the story. First, explain that a retell/recount involves an opening statement, followed by key events listed in sequential or chronological order, and a conclusion; have students recount stories to a partner or with the class.
To summarize the text:
• Create a shared summary with the class. Include an opening statement, key details in chronological order from the text, and a conclusion. Post on chart paper for students to refer to.
• Model explaining the story by writing a summary. Refer back to text to “lift” specific words, phrases, or sentences and embed these into the explanation.
• Have students write their own summaries, highlighting where they have used specific details and examples from the text.
To determine how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges, or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic:
• Have students use graphic organizers or flow charts to monitor how characters respond to challenges over the course of a text.
• Model reading poetry and think aloud how the narrator reflects on the topic. Highlight or annotate places in the text where that is supported.
• Have students practice by annotating poetry either on tablets or on photocopies or using sticky notes.
To help your English language learners, try this:
• Have students draw pictures to reinforce setting, characters, and plot. Make certain that students understand the meaning of the academic vocabulary you’re using, such as “main character” or “main idea.”
For graphic organizer templates, see online resources at www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion.
| Preparing to Teach: Reading Standard 2 |
Preparing the Classroom
Preparing the Texts to Use
Preparing the Mindset
Preparing to Differentiate
Connections to Other Standards:
Common Core Reading Standard 2
Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases
Analyze their development over the course of the text: Refers to the careful and close examination of the parts or elements from which something is made and how those parts affect or function within the whole to create meaning.
Central ideas or messages: Some ideas are more important to a work than others; these are the ideas you could not cut out without fundamentally changing the meaning or quality of the text. Think of the “central” ideas of a text as you would the beams in a building: They are the main elements that make up the text and that all the supporting details help to develop.
Characters respond to challenge: In literature, characters are faced with problems and they respond or react to these problems or challenges. The way they react moves the story along and adds to the event sequence.
Conveyed through particular details: This refers to the way authors might explore an idea (e.g., the sense of isolation that often appears throughout dystopian novels) by referring to it directly or indirectly through details that evoke the idea (such as isolation).
Determine central message: Some ideas are more important to a work than others; these are the ideas you could not cut out without fundamentally changing the meaning or quality of the text. Think of the “central message” of a text as you would the beams in a building: they are the main elements that make up the text and which all the supporting details help to develop.
Development: Think of a grain of rice added to others one at a time to form a pile; this is how writers develop their ideas — by adding imagery, details, examples, and other information over the course of a text. Thus when one “analyzes (the) development” of an idea or theme, for example, they look at how the author does this and what effect such development has on the meaning of the text.
Diverse cultures: The United Nations has defined cultural as follows: “Culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.” Taking that into account, diverse cultures are ones with cultural variety and cultural differences that exist throughout the world or within a society.
Fables: A legendary story of supernatural happenings or a narrative that attempts to impart a truth (often through a moral) —especially in stories where animals speak and have human characteristics. A fable can also be about legendary people and their tales.
Folktales: These started as an oral tradition — short stories or legends passed down by word of mouth through the generations. These tales or legends were part of a common group of people or folk, and may include supernatural elements. Folktales generally reflect or validate certain aspects of the culture or group. Fairy tales are a subgenre of folktales.
Key supporting details and ideas: Important details and ideas support the larger ideas the text develops over time and are used to advance the author’s claim(s). Not all details and ideas are equally important, however, so students must learn to identify those that matter the most in the context of the text.
Main idea: The most important or central idea of a paragraph or of a larger part of a text. The main idea tells the reader what the text is about and is what the author wants you to remember most.
Moral: Used in Standard 2, a moral is a lesson that concerns what is the right or the correct thing to do and can be derived or inferred (or in some cases stated literally) from a story—usually a fable.
Myth: A traditional or legendary story, usually with supernatural beings, ancestors, and heroes. These stories serve to explain the worldview of a people by explaining customs, society, or phenomenon of nature. Perhaps the most common are Greek and Roman myths, which have deities and demigods.
Objective summary: Describes key ideas, details, or events in the text and reports them without adding any commentary or outside description; it is similar to an evening “recap” of the news, which attempts to answer the reporter’s essential questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Retelling and recounting stories, including key details: Retelling and recounting involve students giving an oral account of the key details of a story. They typically include an opening statement, key events listed chronologically, and a concluding statement. (Even though “retelling” and “recount” have slightly different meanings, we use them interchangeably throughout this volume.)
Summary: Identifies the key ideas, details, or events in the text and reports them with an emphasis on who did what to whom and when; in other words, the emphasis is on retelling what happened or what the text says with the utmost fidelity to the text itself, thus requiring students to check what they say against what the text says happened.
Themes: The ideas the text explains, develops, and explores; there can be more than one, but themes are what the text is actually about. Themes can be the central message, the lesson, or what the author wants you to come away with. Common themes are survival, good versus evil, showing respect for others, adventure, love and friendship, and so on.
| Planning to Teach: Reading Standard 2 |
Whole Class
Small Group
Individual Practice/Conferring
| Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standards | Key Ideas and Details |
Reading 3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Literature
3 Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
4 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words or actions).
5 Compare and contrast two or more characters, setting, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).
Informational Text
3 Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
4 Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.
5 Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.
Source: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standard 3
What the Student Does
Literature
3 Gist: Students reading for the characters describe traits, feelings, and motivations, noting how characters’ actions add to the plot and move along the sequence of events toward the ending.
They consider:
• What is the main character’s most important personality trait?
• What does the main character need or want at the beginning of the story?
• How does the main character try to solve her problem?
• How do the other characters respond?
• What is the sequence of important events in the story?
4 Gist: Students reading for the elements use specific details from the text, such as a character’s thoughts or words or actions, and descriptions of place to describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama.
They consider:
• How does the main character behave at the beginning of the story? Why?
• What bothers her most of all? Which details tell me this in these chapters?
• How does the setting play a role in the story or the characters’ actions?
• Why does the character’s behavior change from the beginning of the story to the end? What has she learned?
• What are the important events that lead up to the resolution?
• How do other characters help the main character or make the problem worse?
5 Gist: Students reading for interactions between characters, settings, or events in a story or drama compare and contrast two or more of the above, using key details from the text.
They consider:
• What happens to the main characters in each chapter? By novel’s end? Why?
• What does the main character have in common with another?
• How are characters not alike?
• Where and when is there the most tension? Why?
• How can I use details to explain how the character is changing?
• When I visualize the settings of important scenes, what does that reveal about the characters?
Informational Text
3 Gist: Students reading for information to describe the relationship between a series of events, ideas, concepts, or steps requires them to understand and use technical language. Having established this, students focus on time, sequences, and cause/effect to determine importance.
They consider:
• Does this text describe people and events in history?
• Does it outline steps in a process like a recipe?
• Does this text explain animals, nature, or another science topic?
• What vocabulary words help me understand the topic?
• How can I skim headings, photos, captions, and graphics to deepen my understanding of these pages?
• Does the author use language and key words that identify time, sequence, or cause/effect?
4 Gist: Students reading for information in historical, scientific, or technical texts use specific information directly from the text to recount what happened and why as they explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts.
They consider:
• How is this text organized? Does the author tell about a topic in a chronological sequence?
• How can I “outsmart” the text by using features like the index, TOC, glossary, illustrations and photographs, bolded words, and headings to help me understand?
• What happens in the text?
• What specific information or key ideas explain why the event happened?
• If I had to choose one specific piece of information from each page that best explains what or why something happens, what would it be?
5 Gist: Students reading for information about the relationships between two or more people, events, ideas, or concepts first determine which people, events, ideas, or concepts play an influential role. Students then read the text almost like a scientist would observe an experiment, observing how various people, events, ideas, or concepts influence each other over time.
They consider:
• What type of text is this?
• Which people, events, ideas, or concepts does the author treat as important in the text?
• How would I explain their relationships or interactions?
• What examples or key details help me support my explanation?
• How do people, events, or ideas connect together?
• What are the connections and relationships between procedures, steps, and so on?
Common Core Reading Standard 3
What the Teacher Does
To describe in depth characters, settings, or events in a story:
• As you read aloud books, get students to notice how the character drives the plot. Teach students to hit the pause button at major shifts in setting/scene, time periods, and chapter endings and ask themselves, What does the author want me to notice as new here? How is this helping — or hindering — the character resolve the problem she is trying to solve?
• Have students make a list of all the characters in a story, and chart what they’re like (both externally and internally) and what causes them to be that way/feel that way. Discuss that characters, just like people in real life, have contradictory aspects of their personality.
• Create class charts depicting the sequence of important events, and then have students work in groups to consider an event from each character’s POV.
• Build a plot map — individually, in groups, or as a class — noting specific events in a story.
• Think aloud how you would use the specific details to describe in detail the characters, settings, or events. Model orally and also in written form for the students.
• Have students write in-depth descriptions of characters, setting, or events from the text using specific details.
To explain how actions contribute to the sequence of events:
• Create a graphic chart or plot diagram and ask students to analyze the plot for moments when characters do something that affects the plot—increases tension, causes change —in a measurable, discernable way. Sometimes called a “fever chart” to represent the rising and falling action of events in the story.
To compare/contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, and to explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, procedures, ideas, or concepts:
• Have students identify the wants or needs of key characters and parts of the story where their different wants and needs conflict.
• Have students create graphic organizers (Venn diagrams, two-column notes, double-bubble Thinking Maps) to record information about what is similar and different about characters and their families, their communities, and their beliefs. Look at settings and major events through the same bifocals: What might the author want us to notice through these sharp contrasts?
• Model how to write a comparison piece and then model how to write contrast using graphic organizers. Co-construct a comparison/contrast piece with students using a shared text.
• Help students determine why something happened as it did. This will help them begin to identify cause and effect relationships between concepts, people, and events in informational texts.
• Gather a few texts (informational) that each offer a different and clear example of signal words. Read the texts and chart the signal words (timelines, dates, numbered steps, and words like first, second, next, last, most importantly, and years ago).
To draw from specific details and key details in the text and to summarize:
• Model summarizing the text by thinking aloud and using specific words, phrases, and sentences.
• Have students write their own summaries, highlighting where they have used specific text details.
To use language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect:
• Using a shared text, model how to discern if the text is organized in time, sequence, or cause/effect. Highlight key terms in the text and discuss how these are specific to that technique.
• Create a chart of key language that lets students know that two pieces of information, ideas, concepts, or events are being compared (e.g., but, however, in contrast).
• Teach students how to use highlighting or color-coding to identify and delineate the different key language.
To explain events, scientific ideas, or concepts or steps in technical procedures in a text:
• Using a shared text, model how to determine key words that are important to the main idea of the text.
• Think aloud to demonstrate how to take these key details and formulate “what happened.” Create graphic organizers (e.g., cause/effect charts) to demonstrate the “why” of what happened.
To help your English language learners, try this:
• Guide a small group of students through a text and discuss setting and characters. Students should each have their own copy of the book or text. Help students use vocabulary to describe and explain. Provide students with graphic organizers. Talk thorough the task first, then fill in the organizers with labels and pictures.
For graphic organizer templates, see online resources at www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion.
| Preparing to Teach: Reading Standard 3 |
Preparing the Classroom
Preparing the Texts to Use
Preparing the Mindset
Preparing to Differentiate
Connections to Other Standards:
Common Core Reading Standard 3
Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases
Actions or events: “Actions” refer to what happens, what people do; in English Language Arts it is the actions of the characters we study; in history, of the people who rebel, discover, or invent; in science, what we must do in the context of a procedure. “Events” are those moments in a story or history or any other field when things change that merit the time we spend studying them (war, social movements).
Analyze: This means to look closely at something for the key parts and how they work together.
Cause/effect relationship: The reasons something happens and the consequences of that action. The cause is why something happens. The effect is what happens because of the cause.
Character traits: How a character is — both what they look like and who they are, which is revealed by what they do. Their motivations and feelings, thoughts, words, and actions.
Characters: Characters can be simple (flat, static) or complex (round, dynamic); only characters who change, who have a rich inner life that interacts with people and its environment, can be considered “complex.” Often represented as an arc: what they are like or where they are when the story begins and when it ends.
Compare/contrast: This requires students to identify and analyze what is similar (compare) and what is different (contrast).
Develop and interact: As stories unfold, events and characters change; these changes are the consequence of interactions that take place between people, events, and ideas within a story or an actual event such as “the Twitter Revolution” in Iran, where events, people, and ideas all resulted in a variety of changes and developments as a result of multiple interactions between people, events, and ideas like social media. To “develop” is to otherwise change, increasing or decreasing in importance, growing more complex or evolving into something different altogether.
Key details: In the context of literature, key details relate to story grammar elements, that is, character, setting, problem, major events, and resolution, and how they interact.
Key steps in technical procedures: Whether in social studies or science, the idea here is that some steps or stages are more crucial in any series of steps or stages than others; one must be able to discern this so they can understand why they are so important and how they affect other people or events or experiments.
Major events: These are the most important events in a story and typically relate to how the main character resolves a problem or handles a challenge.
Sequence of events: The order that events in a story or text occur or the order that specific tasks are performed.
Setting: The place or time that a story, novel, or drama takes place. Usually students answer and can describe where it takes place (there may be more than one setting in texts) and when it takes place — this can be a specific time period or can be the past, present, or future.
Steps in technical procedures: Whether in social studies or science, the idea here is that some steps or stages are more crucial in any series of steps or stages than others; one must be able to discern this so they can understand why they are so important and how they affect other people or events.
| Planning to Teach: Reading Standard 3 |
Whole Class
Small Group
Individual Practice/Conferring
| Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standards | Craft and Structure |
Reading 4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
Literature
3 Determine the meanings of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean).
5 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
Informational Text
3 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 3 topic or subject area.
4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases in a text relevant to a grade 4 topic or subject area.
5 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area.
Source: © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.
Grades 3–5 Common Core Reading Standard 4
What the Student Does
Literature
3 Gist: Students determine what words and phrases mean in text. They discern if the language is literal or nonliteral.
They consider:
• Which words or phrases on this page (in this chapter) seem most important?
• What does the author’s word choice here make me think of?
• Which words or phrases help me understand what’s happening?
• Which words or phrases get me to “read between the lines” and infer meaning?
• How can I use words I do know to figure out the meaning of words I don’t know?
4 Gist: Students determine what words and phrases mean in text. They recognize that specific words refer to significant characters in mythology (e.g., Herculean, Trojan Horse, Achilles’ Heel); these words often provide insight into characters or descriptions.
They consider:
• Which words or phrases on this page(s) seem most important?
• What does the author’s word choice here make me think of? How can I connect that to the event here?
• Which words or phrases help me understand the literal action?
• Which words or phrases get me to “read between the lines” and infer meaning?
• How does the language in this section set a tone? How does the tone help me understand what the characters are thinking right now?
• Are there any words from Greek mythology that are used to describe characters?
• What do these mythological words mean in the context of this text?
5 Gist: Students figure out what words mean and how context affects the meaning of words and phrases, by examining if meaning is literal or figurative, especially metaphors and similes.
They consider:
• What words or phrases tell me the most about characters, actions, events, or the setting?
• Which words or phrases help me understand the meaning of this portion or the text as a whole?
• Which words or phrase are figurative language and why is the author using them?
• What types of figurative language are used?
• How can I use the surrounding sentences to help me determine the meaning of the figurative language (especially similes and metaphors)?
• How does the language in this section set a tone? How does the tone help me understand what the characters are thinking right now?
Informational Text
3 Gist: Students determine what words and phrases mean in texts relevant to third-grade topics or subject areas.
They consider:
• What is the topic of this text? How does knowing the main topic help me figure out the meaning of this sentence or section?
• How can I use the text and surrounding photos and caption to figure out what this word or phrase means?
• How can I look at text features (titles, bolded words, headings, captions) or illustrations to help me figure out what is being explained on this page?
• Is there a glossary or other feature to help me figure out the meaning of a word?
• Are there words the author uses repeatedly or did the author use a synonym to define this topic-specific word?
4 Gist: Students determine what words and phrases mean in texts relevant to fourth-grade topics or subject areas.
They consider:
• What is the topic of this text?
• What do I know about the topic that can help me figure out the meaning of this sentence/section?
• How can I use the text and surrounding photos and caption to figure out what this word or phrase means?
• How can I look at text features (titles, glossary, bolded words, headings, captions) or illustrations to help me figure out what is being explained on this page?
• Are there words the author uses repeatedly or did the author use a synonym to define this topic-specific word?
5 Gist: Students determine what words and phrases mean in texts relevant to fifth-grade topics or subject areas.
They consider:
• What is the topic of this text?
• What do I know about the topic that can help me figure out the meaning of this sentence/section?
• How can I use the text and surrounding photos and caption to figure out what this word or phrase means?
• How can I look at text features (titles, glossary, bolded words, headings, captions) or illustrations to help me figure out what is being explained on this page?
• Are there words the author uses repeatedly or did the author use a synonym to define this topic-specific word?
• When I read aloud the word or sentence, does that help me figure out the challenging word?
Common Core Reading Standard 4
What the Teacher Does
To determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text:
• Generate a vocabulary chart at the outset of a new nonfiction unit or chapter. Don’t be afraid to explicitly teach key words up front, with the idea that students will take ownership of figuring out plenty of challenging words in the subsequent reading.
• Think aloud while reading to the class to show how you puzzle out a word or phrase using syntactic, semantic, typographic, etymological, and other types of information to decipher words. Invite students to try a word.
• Teach students to look all around the words phrase as though they’re hunting for something on their closet floor! Is there a word part they know? What about the other words in the sentence — is the challenging word part of a series of like things (e.g., Lions eat deer, zebras, mice, and ____________ )? What clues are on the page (captions, diagrams, images)? Does the author define it a sentence or two later?
• Point out the way authors use explanations, synonyms, restatement (e.g., in other words …), contrast, or antonyms, which can help you know a challenging word.
• Encourage students to mark unknown words in their texts with sticky notes as they are reading independently and then to go back and determine meaning. Check in with students in small group or in conferences on how they are using this strategy.
• Use a shared text to have students highlight unknown words and annotate in the margins.
• When working with the whole class or small groups or conferring one-on-one with students, encourage them to acknowledge when they don’t know a word or phrase.
