The Common Core Companion: The Standards Decoded, Grades 3-5. Leslie Blauman

including fables, folktales, and myths, from diverse cultures:

      • As you read aloud, introduce students to different types of stories, such as realistic stories, adventure stories, fantasy, folktales, fables, and myths. Compare and contrast, and chart their attributes.

      • Provide students with a variety of fables, folktales, and myths. Have students work in small groups to study a type in depth and share knowledge with class (e.g., Cinderella stories, Greek myths, American tall tales).

      • Model how to recount the story. First, explain that a retell/recount involves an opening statement, followed by key events listed in sequential or chronological order, and a conclusion; have students recount stories to a partner or with the class.

       To summarize the text:

      • Create a shared summary with the class. Include an opening statement, key details in chronological order from the text, and a conclusion. Post on chart paper for students to refer to.

      • Model explaining the story by writing a summary. Refer back to text to “lift” specific words, phrases, or sentences and embed these into the explanation.

      • Have students write their own summaries, highlighting where they have used specific details and examples from the text.

       To determine how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges, or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic:

      • Have students use graphic organizers or flow charts to monitor how characters respond to challenges over the course of a text.

      • Model reading poetry and think aloud how the narrator reflects on the topic. Highlight or annotate places in the text where that is supported.

      • Have students practice by annotating poetry either on tablets or on photocopies or using sticky notes.

       To help your English language learners, try this:

      • Have students draw pictures to reinforce setting, characters, and plot. Make certain that students understand the meaning of the academic vocabulary you’re using, such as “main character” or “main idea.”

       For graphic organizer templates, see online resources at www.corwin.com/thecommoncorecompanion.

Preparing to Teach: Reading Standard 2

      Preparing the Classroom

      Preparing the Texts to Use

      Preparing the Mindset

      Preparing to Differentiate

      Connections to Other Standards:

      Common Core Reading Standard 2

      Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases

      Analyze their development over the course of the text: Refers to the careful and close examination of the parts or elements from which something is made and how those parts affect or function within the whole to create meaning.

      Central ideas or messages: Some ideas are more important to a work than others; these are the ideas you could not cut out without fundamentally changing the meaning or quality of the text. Think of the “central” ideas of a text as you would the beams in a building: They are the main elements that make up the text and that all the supporting details help to develop.

      Characters respond to challenge: In literature, characters are faced with problems and they respond or react to these problems or challenges. The way they react moves the story along and adds to the event sequence.

      Conveyed through particular details: This refers to the way authors might explore an idea (e.g., the sense of isolation that often appears throughout dystopian novels) by referring to it directly or indirectly through details that evoke the idea (such as isolation).

      Determine central message: Some ideas are more important to a work than others; these are the ideas you could not cut out without fundamentally changing the meaning or quality of the text. Think of the “central message” of a text as you would the beams in a building: they are the main elements that make up the text and which all the supporting details help to develop.

      Development: Think of a grain of rice added to others one at a time to form a pile; this is how writers develop their ideas — by adding imagery, details, examples, and other information over the course of a text. Thus when one “analyzes (the) development” of an idea or theme, for example, they look at how the author does this and what effect such development has on the meaning of the text.

      Diverse cultures: The United Nations has defined cultural as follows: “Culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.” Taking that into account, diverse cultures are ones with cultural variety and cultural differences that exist throughout the world or within a society.

      Fables: A legendary story of supernatural happenings or a narrative that attempts to impart a truth (often through a moral) —especially in stories where animals speak and have human characteristics. A fable can also be about legendary people and their tales.

      Folktales: These started as an oral tradition — short stories or legends passed down by word of mouth through the generations. These tales or legends were part of a common group of people or folk, and may include supernatural elements. Folktales generally reflect or validate certain aspects of the culture or group. Fairy tales are a subgenre of folktales.

      Key supporting details and ideas: Important details and ideas support the larger ideas the text develops over time and are used to advance the author’s claim(s). Not all details and ideas are equally important, however, so students must learn to identify those that matter the most in the context of the text.

      Main idea: The most important or central idea of a paragraph or of a larger part of a text. The main idea tells the reader what the text is about and is what the author wants you to remember most.

      Moral: Used in Standard 2, a moral is a lesson that concerns what is the right or the correct thing to do and can be derived or inferred (or in some cases stated literally) from a story—usually a fable.

      Myth: A traditional or legendary story, usually with supernatural beings, ancestors, and heroes. These stories serve to explain the worldview of a people by explaining customs, society, or phenomenon of nature. Perhaps the most common are Greek and Roman myths, which have deities and demigods.

      Objective summary: Describes key ideas, details, or events in the text and reports them without adding any commentary or outside description; it is similar to an evening “recap” of the news, which attempts to answer the reporter’s essential questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.

      Retelling and recounting stories, including key details: Retelling and recounting involve students giving an oral account of the key details of a story. They typically include an opening statement, key events listed chronologically, and a concluding