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 continue to examine grade-appropriate texts.
• Students will continue to determine how historical, cultural, and/or global perspectives affect the author’s style and organization. 

• Teachers provide students with opportunities to read a variety of texts.
• Teachers provide students with feedback on their responses to the reading selections. 

Supporting Resource

Teacher Insights

• The Literature Network (webpage) 

• This standard addresses the idea that students are thoroughly considering how the world around the author impacts the text.   

• These outside influences could be historical events, social and cultural norms and viewpoints, and prominent cultural theories, philosophies, and movements (for example, Romanticism and feminism).

• Different literary periods and theories may be helpful; for more information on these: The Literature Network.

• Based on that context, authors may make many rhetorical and style choices regarding the arrangement of the idea(s) or argument(s), the syntax, and the diction.  

• All of these choices are made for different effects including appeals to ethos, pathos, and/or logos.This standard is essentially asking students to conduct a rhetorical analysis that focuses on the rhetorical situation of the text.

• Example: Using a text that takes place during the Jim Crow era students could consider whether there was something in  the author’s world (racism, the Great Depression, poverty, being raised by a single father) that affected the character development, the way in which the characters speak, the figurative language that is present, the plot conflicts, the archetypes, and/or the themes.

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.