Your Literacy Standards Companion, Grades 9-12. Jim Burke

accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.

      9–10 Science/Technical Subjects

      Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks attending to special cases or exceptions defined in the text.

      11–12 Science/Technical Subjects

      Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks; analyze the specific results based on explanations in the text.

      Source: Copyright © 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

      Common Core Reading Standard 3: What the Student Does

      9–10 Literature

      Gist: Examine how characters interact with others and affect the plot or theme, looking, for example, at motivation and how it adds to the complexity of characters. Also, readers should examine how characters evolve, noting how different, often conflicting motives, advance the plot and contribute to the theme.

       Which characters are most important (and complex)?

       What do the main characters want and why do they want it? What do these desires tell us about them?

       How do the characters evolve over the course of the story?

       What effect does a character’s actions or changes have on other key characters?

      11–12 Literature

      Gist: Identify the author’s key decisions about about setting, characterization, and plot, focusing on how these choices affect the development and meaning of these elements throughout the story or play. Note also the interplay between the different elements (e.g., between the action and the setting).

       Which of the author’s decisions most affect the elements of the story and how they develop or connect to each other over time?

       Of these decisions, which most affect the story’s meaning?

       How do the author’s decisions about setting, plot design, or character development affect the story’s meaning or impact?

       How are events in the story arranged—and to what end?

      9–10 Informational Text

      Gist: Read to grasp the connections between actions and events as the text unfolds, focusing on how these elements are arranged and what the author says about them. Pay special attention to how, when, and why the author introduces and develops these ideas and events.

       What ideas or events does the author introduce at the beginning of the text?

       What new information, evidence, or details does the author provide?

       How do these additions affect the text?

       What evidence from the text supports and illustrates your claims about the meaning and importance of ideas, people, and events—and the evolving relationship between them?

      11–12 Informational Text

      Gist: Look for sets of ideas or sequences of events that interact with each other throughout the text. Note how various elements—specific individuals, ideas, or events—interact and enhance their own meaning or importance within the larger text.

       What is the subject, content, or focus of this text—people, events, ideas, processes, or experiences?

       How are these elements connected—categories, stages, or other?

       How do these connections affect meaning over the course of the text?

       How do these elements or connections evolve and interact and contribute to the meaning of the text?

      9–10 History/Social Studies

      Gist: Identify those events which matter most in a text, then break down the relationship between these elements, focusing on how each event—a war, discovery, movement, signing of key legislation, declaration, or proclamation—relates to those which precede or follow it.

       Which events are most important in this text?

       How does a given event or moment relate to those which come before or follow that moment?

       How and why did the author choose to arrange events as they did: cause–effect, problem–solution, chronological, or other?

      11–12 History/Social Studies

      Gist: Identify key decisions or acts in a major historical or social movement, process, era, or event about which historians or social scientists disagree, examining those competing explanations and arguments and drawing conclusions about which explanation or argument is best supported by evidence from the texts they read and where the text suggests a lack of evidence or knowledge.

       What is the event, action, or idea about which the texts offer competing positions or explanations?

       What evidence do the most credible, objective texts provide?

       Where and why is the text unclear, ambiguous, or ambivalent?

      9–10 Science/Technical Subjects

      Gist: Identify the steps in a complicated multistep procedure, following the directions with precision when measuring, experimenting, or performing specialized tasks; also, use criteria from the text to determine if a situation is exceptional.

       What are the specific steps—and the proper order—for this procedure?

       What order should those steps go in? How do you know?

       What criteria suggest the current situation is an exception?

      11–12 Science/Technical Subjects

      Gist: Identify the steps in a complicated multistep procedure, following the directions with precision when measuring, experimenting, or performing technical tasks; then use criteria from the text to analyze the results.

       What are the specific steps to follow for this procedure?

       What order should those steps go in? How do you know?

       What criteria does the text offer for analyzing the results?

      Common Core Reading Standard 3: What the Teacher Does

       To have students analyze how complex characters develop and interact, do the following:

       Have students generate a list of all the characters, and then determine, according to the criteria they create, which ones are complex and the nature of that complexity.

       Have students build a plot map—individually, in groups, or as a class—noting each time certain key characters interact; analyze who does or says what, in each situation, and its effect on the text.

       Identify the motivations of key characters and those