Standard 3: Critical Reading and Writing

Students will apply critical thinking skills to reading and writing.

 For more specific genre information, please refer to Genre Guidance (page 4 of the Support Documents.).

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will be able to make connections, (for example theme, characters, and setting) between different types of texts.
• Students will give evidence to support their connections within each text.
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• Teachers model taking different types of text and making connections, providing textual evidence supporting their inferences.

• Teachers provide multiple opportunities to make connections between stories and provide textual evidence to support their inferences.

• Teachers monitor student understanding of making connections and inferencing and give feedback as necessary.

• Teachers model taking different types of text and making connection, providing textual evidence supporting their inferences.

• Teachers provide multiple opportunities to make connections between stories and provide textual evidence to support their inferences.

• Teachers monitor student understanding of making connections and inferencing and give feedback as necessary.

• Teachers can utilize specific models to teach inference such as:

• "It says, I say, and so" developed by Kylene Beers (2003)

• Simplified model includes the following assumptions:

• We need to find clues to get some answers.

• We need to add those clues to what we already know or have read.

• There can be more than one correct answer.

• We need to be able to support inference. 

Supporting Resources

Teacher Insights

• Reading Rockets Inferencing Strategies (webpage)
• learnzillion.com:citing textual evidence to support inference (webpage)
• readingrockets.org: inference strategies (webpage)

• This standard is asking for students to make text-to-text connections revolving around theme and/or other  literary elements and devices.

• Students making thematic connections will note similarities between themes of two or more texts and support their inferences with details from each text.

• Students making connections involving various literary devices/elements will find examples in different texts and explain how the details in each text support their inferences.

• Example: Students could read some excerpts that deal with similar thematic ideas relating to love. After reading, students can analyze the development of the theme in each piece using textual evidence to support their inferences.

• Students should be able to articulate these connections using their own prior knowledge of print and non-print texts (i.e., connecting the theme of a story or poem to a movie or song).

• Textual evidence could be a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or a combination of them.

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.