Students retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
2 Students recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
Informational Text
K With prompting and support, students identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
1 Students identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
2 Students identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text.
Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 2: What the Student Does
Literature
K Gist: Students identify the central message or lesson of a familiar story, then report on the key ideas, details, and events that help convey this message or lesson.
They consider:
Who is the story mostly about?
What problem is this character facing?
How does the character resolve it?
How is this character different at the end of the story than at the beginning?
1 Gist: Students identify the central message or lesson of a story, then report on the key ideas, details, and events, including just the important information, not every single detail.
They consider:
What problem/need is the main character experiencing?
What gets in the character’s way?
How is the problem resolved?
What events lead to a resolution of the character’s problem?
How is the main character different at the end of the story than at the beginning?
2 Gist: Students identify the central message, lesson, or moral of a story, including fables and folktales, then chronologically recount the main events, including just the most important information, not every single detail.
They consider:
What message, lesson, or moral does the author want me to take away from reading this text?
What details led me to determine this?
What details from the beginning, middle, and end would I include when retelling or recounting this story?
Informational Text
K Gist: Students identify the main topic of an informational text, then report on the key ideas, details, and events that help convey the main topic.
They consider:
What is the main topic of this text?
What is the most important information about the main topic that the author wants me to know?
1 Gist: Students identify the main topic of a text, then report on the key ideas, details, and events, including just the important information, not every single detail.
They consider:
What is the main topic of this text or section?
What is the most important information about the main topic that the author wants me to know?
2 Gist: Students identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text, then recount the key ideas, details, and events in each paragraph that help explain the main topic, including just the important information, not every single detail.
They consider:
What is the main topic of this text?
What key ideas, details, and events in each paragraph helped me determine this?
What details would I include when recounting what this text is about?
Note: Although the questions listed above are too difficult for most young students to internalize and apply on their own, we share them to give teachers a detailed sense of what their students should be striving toward as learners. K–2 students may not be able to ask these questions of themselves independently, but teachers can use them as a jumping-off point for lesson content and as prompts and reminders to share with students. Over time and with instruction, students will be able to pose these questions on their own.
Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 2: What the Teacher Does
To have students determine the central ideas, message, or main topic of the text:
Make talking about the central or main message (literature) and main topic (informational) a routine part of what you do when you read aloud to students or confer with them.
Think aloud about how you determine the author’s central message and main topic, and point out the details—words, sentences, and illustrations—that helped you reason and infer.
Share big books or enlarged texts with students and have them participate in figuring out the author’s central message or main topic by attending to specific words, phrases, and images in the text.
Plan lessons that demonstrate how the illustrations in both literature and informational text help readers figure out and elaborate on the central message or main topic. Repeat similar lessons throughout the year in which students study illustrations to glean information.
Guide students to consider how the title, headings, pictures/captions, and bold words in an informational text help readers figure out the main topic, pointing out to students when the author plainly states the main idea in a paragraph’s first sentence and other places.
To have students analyze the development of the central message:
Help students to recognize that focusing on the elements of story grammar (i.e., character, setting, problem, main events, and resolution) is one of the most effective ways to determine how a story is developing. Use a story grammar graphic organizer to illustrate this point (resources.corwin.com/literacycompanionk-2).
Give students regular practice in thinking and talking about the main character in a story they’re reading on their own. For example, they might think about the problem that character has, how other characters support the
