Common Core Reading: Informational Text Standard 1

It's time to circle back around to Informational Text, which is such an integral part of the Common Core. These standards are also based on the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading; therefore, they are parallel to the Literature standards.

Standard 1 (CCRA.R.1) includes these important directives:

• read closely
• determine what the text says explicitly
• make logical inferences
• cite

Let's discuss how this plays out for middle grade students. Third graders (CCSS RI.3.1) are asked to refer explicitly to the text when answering questions. Students in fourth grade (RI.4.1) must "refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text." In grade 5 (RI.5.1), students are also asked to quote.

Some work I did for LearnZillion relates directly to this standard. Today's blog has two purposes: (1) to discuss RI.1 using a specific set of LearnZillion lessons and (2) to introduce you to LearnZillion, which can be a valuable (free) resource for your classroom.

In this featured LearnZillion series, the process of answering a prompt with a constructed response (RI.3.1) has been broken into eight short video lessons. The students read a text (which you can download from the site), and the videos model each step in the process:

• Understand a constructed response question

• Use text features and clue words to find evidence in a text

• Record evidence

• Organize evidence and make a plan for a written response

• Write a topic sentence that includes the big idea

• Write evidence to support your answer in your own words

• Write a conclusion by restating the big idea

• Revise

Each lesson is followed by guided practice, extension activities, and a quick quiz. LearnZillion offers over 2000 videos for Grades 3-9 that were specially designed to address either ELA or Math Common Core State Standards. Check it out!