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