READING TOOLS
This page provides a miscellany of resources intended to help students cultivate active reading habits and improve critical thinking. In the list below you will find materials that outline some effective ways of reading a variety of texts for a range of purposes, promote strategies for thinking about the content of a text, and provide a terminology for analyzing literature, art, and film.
This page provides a miscellany of resources intended to help students cultivate active reading habits and improve critical thinking. In the list below you will find materials that outline some effective ways of reading a variety of texts for a range of purposes, promote strategies for thinking about the content of a text, and provide a terminology for analyzing literature, art, and film.
Reading Guides
The Language of Literature: Glossaries and Terminology |
VIDEO GALLERY
How to Analyze Works of Art: An Exemplar
In the video below, produced by the Khan Academy, two art historians describe and discuss Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco of The Last Supper. Pay careful attention to how Beth Harris and Steven Zucker use domain-specific terminology when explaining the formal elements and stylistic features of the painting, as well as the interplay between analysis, interpretation, and evaluation in their efforts to inform us about why this work of art is widely deemed a Renaissance masterpiece.
In the video below, produced by the Khan Academy, two art historians describe and discuss Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco of The Last Supper. Pay careful attention to how Beth Harris and Steven Zucker use domain-specific terminology when explaining the formal elements and stylistic features of the painting, as well as the interplay between analysis, interpretation, and evaluation in their efforts to inform us about why this work of art is widely deemed a Renaissance masterpiece.
Common Core State Standards for
READING
READING
The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy represent the next generation of K–12 standards designed to prepare all students for success in college, career, and life by the time they graduate from high school.
The following standards for grades 9-10 offer a focus for instruction in each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.
The following standards for grades 9-10 offer a focus for instruction in each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.
Key Ideas and Details
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
Craft and Structure
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5: Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.6: Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.8: (RL.9-10.8 not applicable to literature)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.10: By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
Craft and Structure
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5: Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.6: Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.8: (RL.9-10.8 not applicable to literature)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.10: By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9-10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 9-10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.