The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 3-5. Leslie Blauman
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.
| 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