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 closely inspect the structure and content of the text.
• Students will closely inspect the structure and content of the text.
• Students will examine similarities and differences about a text. (compare/contrast)
• Students will examine text structure in which the main ideas are organized into two parts: a problem and a subsequent solution that responds to the problem, or a question and an answer that responds to the question. (problem/solution)
• Students will examine text structure that notes a relationship in which an event or events (the cause) make(s) another event or action happen (effect). (cause/effect)
• Students will examine text structure that makes an assertion of the truth of something supported with evidence. (claims/evidence)
• Students will make inferences about the text.
• Students will support their understanding with textual evidence.
• Students will develop a simple logical conclusion.
• Students will do the following, as they are reading the text:
• Stop and ask questions as they read
• Think about the purpose
• Highlight textual evidence that support the purpose of the article 

• Teachers model how to decide what type of text is being examined.
• Teachers model how to draw logical conclusions based on information in the text.
• Teachers model how to use textual evidence to support conclusions.
• Teachers provide multiple opportunities to examine text with different structures.
• Teachers monitor student understanding of text structure and give feedback as necessary.

• Teachers should instruct students to use inference questions when reading independently:
• What is my inference?
• What information did I use to make the inference?
• How good was my thinking?
• Do I need to change my thinking? 

Supporting Resources

Teacher Insights

• Smekens Education Solution (webpage)

• How to teach text structures/ Reading Rockets (webpage)

• Language Arts Text Structures (webpage)

• Adolescent Literacy Text Structures (webpage)

• Graphic organizers (PDF)

• Minds in Bloom: Teaching Inference (webpage)

• Text structure refers to the way an author organizes their text.

• Identifying the text structure at the beginning encourages the reader to question how subsequent sections of the text fit into the identified text structure. This process enables the reader to monitor their comprehension.

• Proficient readers of literature will not necessarily be  proficient readers of expository texts. Fiction texts follow similar general organizational patterns, however, expository texts can have very different text structures.

• To analyze structure in a text, students need the academic vocabulary (signal words) for thinking about the structure of a text.

• Description: text structure that presents a topic, along with information that describes that topic.

• Each section opens with its main idea, then elaborates on it, sometimes dividing the elaboration into subsections.

• Signal Words: For example, for instance, specifically, in particular, in addition

• Compare and Contrast: text structure in which ideas are related to one another on the basis of similarities and differences.

• Signal Words: However, unlike, like, by contrast, yet, in comparison, although, whereas, similar to, different from

• Sequential Order: text structure in which ideas are grouped on the basis of order or time.

• Signal Words: Next, first, last, second, another, then, additionally, finally

• Problem and Solution: text structure in which the main ideas are organized into two parts: a problem and a solution to the problem, or a question and an answer that responds to the question.

• Signal Words: problem, solution, resolution

• Cause and Effect:text structure that notes a relationship in which an event (the cause) make(s) another event happen (effect).

• Cause: Why? Effect: What Happened?

• Signal Words: Consequently, therefore, as a result, thereby, leads to

• The easiest way for students to see the difference in organizational patterns is to show them similar information presented in different text structures.

• When analyzing text structure, students have to read for more than just ideas and how they  are related to one another in order to support understanding of the text.

• For example, a student may read an argument about global warming in which the author discusses several possible causes and their effects.  After analyzing the cause/effect relationship between the ideas in the text, the student may conclude that the effects mentioned in the article may contribute to global warming (depending on the the credibility of the evidence).

• 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.