How does Common Core Anchor Standard 5 for Reading fit with Balanced Literacy?

As a faculty, we have been reading Pathways to the Common Core by Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman.  We get together in small, grade level groups to discuss various ideas and components of the Common Core Standards presented in this book.  I facilitate the activities when we meet, and I had decided to stop on chapter 5 for a while.  This chapter provides an overview of the standards, but I feel that it goes quickly through each one.  Since the standards are unfamiliar to me and my staff, I supplemented our book study with another book, The Common Core:  Teaching K-5 Students to Meet the Reading Standards by Maureen McLaughlin and Brenda J. Overturf (pictured below).


I chose to use this specific book to complement our current reading because McLaughlin and Overturf provide key points of the standards and then they align each standard with easily-implementable strategies.  The beginning of the book is a very dry read for those already familiar with the background of the development of the standards, but then the book gets super exciting.  The authors provide the reader with specific information about each standard, for each grade level, and strategies to use in the classroom.  I have been using this book as my guide to discuss each and every anchor standard in the area of reading with my staff.

The most recent standard we discussed is anchor standard 5.  To start the discussion with my faculty, I read this quote from McLaughlin, “students who are more knowledgeable about text structure recall more information.”  I asked my staff why they thought this was so.  Common responses were that readers could predict based on the structure and it is easier to make connections when a reader is familiar with the structure of the text.  I believe that when a reader identifies the structure of a piece of text, they then can visualize the information in a graphic organizer in their heads, thus remembering the information in their graphic organizer.  For example, if I am reading a section of text that refers to the life-cycle of an animal, I immediately picture a circular graphic organizer with arrows, and I put the information into each piece of the organizer.  When I need to recall the information, I picture the graphic I created in my head.

We took a look at 6 different types of text structure using this chart I had on the board.


I had created 4 category headings (description, cause/effect, compare/contrast, time/chronological order/sequence), and teachers were to look through fiction and nonfiction leveled readers I chose and place them under the correct heading.  I explained that we were looking at the text as a whole, and not specific pieces of the text.   I told them that some of the texts would have components of each category, but for this activity we were focusing on the text as a whole.  I had two books aside that I used as teachers finished their sorting.  For these two books, I indicated a specific paragraph or page to look at for them to categorize.
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After teachers had the leveled readers sorted, we discussed why we thought each book was an indicator for each heading.  Not everyone had the same opinion, which led to rich discussion.  I found that it was hard for many to stay focused on the book as a whole.  A lot of people wanted to pick out one paragraph and base the structure on that one cause/effect relationship.

To address key words that appear over and over for each category, I gave participants small sticky notes and they wrote down key words they found (or know of) for each heading.  They placed their post-its on our chart.  While we were standing at the chart, I asked them what type of graphic organizer they would recommend with each type of text structure, and I uncovered the large post-its to reveal the most common organizers for each type of structure.




We then went back to McLaughlin and Overturf’s book, and took a look at the Common Core State Standard for each grade level in Reading Literature and Reading Information Text.  Although the standards provide some specifics, I find it difficult for some teachers to think about the supporting skills and strategies that go along with each standard.  That is why I am using McLaughlin’s book, because the authors provide specifics to what each grade level needs to be addressing.

For example, kindergarten should

• recognize storybooks and poems,


• identify a front cover, back cover, and title page.

4^th grade should

• explain the differences between poems, drama, and prose,


• refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter),


• refer to the structural elements of drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions),


• identify chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution,


• describe the overall structure of events in a text,


• describe the overall structure of ideas or concepts in a text,


• describe the overall structure of information in a text.

To connect this to balanced literacy, I had teachers bring The Continuum of Literacy Learning by Fountas and Pinnell.  One section of this book offers specific behaviors and understandings for guided reading.  It describes the evidence of thinking within, beyond, and about the text.  We took a look at various levels of readers that teachers have within their classes.  In the section heading Thinking About the Text, under Analyzing, there is usually more than one bullet that relates to anchor standard 5.

• For a level C reader, the behavior is described as realize stories have a beginning and an end, and understand how the ideas in a text are related to the title.


• The level E reader is expected to recognize whether a text is fiction or nonfiction, recognize and discuss how print layout or features are used to reflect meaning, understand that a story has a beginning, a series of events, and an end, and recognize when the writer is presenting a sequence of events, a set of directions, or simple factual information.


• The level I reader should notice some characteristics of genre, identify and differentiate between informational and fiction texts, understand and talk about when a writer has used underlying structures (description, compare and contrast, temporal sequence, problem and solution), and notice how writers or illustrators use layout and print features for emphasis.

I believe teachers walked away from this half hour session with an understanding of different types of text structure, and the knowledge of how to integrate anchor standard 5  into their read alouds and guided reading groups.