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 use evidence from the text to make and check predictions as they read.

• Students will refer to the text for support when analyzing and drawing inferences. 

• Teachers model making predictions within and between texts.

• Teachers provide multiple opportunities to make predictions within and between texts.

• Teachers model how to use textual evidence to support their predictions.

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

• Teachers will 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 inferences (webpage)

• Analyzing a text, or the ideas in texts, involves looking at the smaller parts of a text to gain a better understanding of the whole.

• An inference is a logical conclusion made from observations or details assumed to be true and the conclusions drawn from this process.

• Students should make inferences that involve people, surroundings, and events.

• For example, students might make predictions and support it with textual evidence, or make inferences about why a character did or said something with textual support.

• 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.