Working with reading standard 9 is a challenge for elementary school students. The goal of this standard is to learn how to gather information from more than one source to learn more about a topic. As with all good instruction, this requires think-aloud modeling and multiple modeling sessions. As I worked with a group of third graders this month, I… Read more →
Theme and main/ central idea are the two different terms used in the Anchor Reading Standard 2. While different terms, both get at the same core concept: message. What does the author want the reader to take away? This is confusing for students and most adults. Teaching it as two different concepts is challenging. So how do introduce these concepts?… Read more →
Introducing this chart: While terms like main, big, or central make sense to teachers, these terms remain elusive and vague to many students. This fun chart just asks variations of the same question in different ways. When you use this with your students, you will find that they all will find one question that resonates with them. I always find… Read more →
This chart typically becomes a staple in the classrooms that I work with. This is the jumping off point to begin the discussion about close reading and the notion that reading is more than just decoding, it is about thinking. This supports the idea of comprehension and interaction with the text. Target Grade Levels: This chart works well for all… Read more →
The Multiple Sources informational text standard requires elementary school students to examine two or more texts on the same topic. Students don’t necessarily have to find these sources, as we do with some research standards. The focus here is on analysis. Students are expected to analyze how those sources present information. This includes an analysis of the content, presentation, and word choices…. Read more →
Yesterday, I posted about the different types of text features that students will explore under standard 5. Today, I want to share a lesson that I like to do when digging a bit deeper into text structures with elementary school students. I hope it is useful! As always, I have included the anchor chart that we made with this lesson…. Read more →
Students in third through fifth grade have probably spent several years learning about narrative structure. As they begin to learn more about informational text, they have to reframe how they think about text because informational text can be nonlinear. This means that it does not have to be read in the same way by everyone. Readers can “enter” the text… Read more →
Reading for Literature Standard 6 is one of the most misunderstood Common Core Standards. many teachers are mistakenly teaching this as a unit on first, second, and third person. This is simply off base. What RL6 is really about is the character’s point of view. This means: how does that character see the world? What is the character’s perspective? I… Read more →
