Ultimately, the standards exist to provide context for instructional planning. As educators working to thoughtfully help children achieve the goals outlined at each grade level, we must be thinking about what we understand about each standard’s intentions. That said, it can be helpful to have ways of remembering and quickly accessing each of the standards.
These “lite” standards are only a reference tool intended to facilitate conversation and make it easier to remember the individual standards. They certainly don’t eliminate the need to understand the standards in their complete forms, nor do they represent the nuances of the standards. Combined with the pictures for each, however, we hope they can serve as icons for each standard, simply providing a shorthand for educators.
Key Ideas and details
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.
The “Read Closely and Cite Evidence” Standard
2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
The “Big Picture” Standard
3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
The “Things Change” Standard
Craft and Structure
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.
The “Word Choice” standard
5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
The “Text Structure” Standard
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
The “Point-of-View Matters” Standard
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.
The “Multi Media” Standard
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
The “Believe it or Not” Standard
9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
The “Look for Patterns Across Texts” Standard
Range of Reading and Level of text Complexity
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
The “Read to Think” Standard
Thanks to Lori Mack who asked us to think about how we would label the ELA standards.
Tomorrow … the core of the writing standards.
Thanks for this very useful, handy guide. Looking forward to your take on the writing standards. Thanks again for sharing this.
Glad you found it helpful!
Thanks for putting this together! Very helpful synthesis of the standards. The only nuance I would add is in Standard 3. You write that it’s the “things change” standard. I would argue it’s more apt to name it the “things interact” standard. Much more about the way literary elements and, for RI.3, ideas, people, events, etc. interact in a text than it is how things change. Just my thought.
Thanks again!
Nice job. This is a great simple guide to the complex.
All interaction involves change or lack of change. I think I like change better than interaction. More human.
As always, your posts spur me to think critically about CCSS and ask questions. Not sure I “get” the leaf symbol, though. I’ve always connected text structure with an icon similar to the following:
http://www.clker.com/clipart-government-building.html
What am I missing here?
I appreciate your collaborative and timely writing!
When we thought about which image would work best for standard 5, we thought about a leaf because when you look closely, you see that it has a skeleton or framework that makes it either a maple leaf or an oak leaf or whatever kind of leaf it is (part to whole). We think the building works as well, though! Thanks for your support and feedback!
Thanks for the visuals to add understanding to the CCS. I’ll keep them handy for further use.