CCRA.R.10: Reading Complex Texts Independently and Proficiently

Overview

Lesson Procedure

55-60 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5 minutes
2. Direct Instruction15-20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up5 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Think of the last time you read something and realized, halfway down the page, that you had no idea what it said. What gave it away that you were lost? Write down one thing you did next, even if it was giving up."

   Collect answers on the board in two columns: Signs I was lost (I could not say what happened; the words kept going but nothing stuck) and What I did. Circle the moves that help, such as rereading or slowing down, and tell students the lesson is about using those moves on purpose.

2. Direct Instruction15-20 minutes

   Terms for the whole period.

   • Text complexity: how hard a text is to read. The Common Core describes it in three parts: quantitative measures (word and sentence length, measured by readability formulas), qualitative features (judged by a careful reader) and the reader and task (who is reading, and for what purpose).
   • The four qualitative features: levels of meaning or purpose; structure; how plain or unusual the language is; and the background knowledge a reader needs (knowledge demands).
   • Monitoring: checking, chunk by chunk, whether you can say what you just read in your own words. A fix-up strategy is what you do when you cannot.
   • Independently means without someone else doing the hard part; proficiently means accurately and with understanding.

   Progression of CCRA.R.10 in grades 6-12

   Grade-level standard	Band and text type	What this band adds
   RL.6.10	Grade 6, literature	Stories, dramas and poems in the grades 6-8 complexity band, with scaffolding as needed at the high end
   RL.7.10	Grade 7, literature	The same band as grade 6, read with more confidence; scaffolding still allowed at the high end
   RL.8.10	Grade 8, literature	Literature at the high end of the grades 6-8 band, read independently
   RL.9-10.10	Grades 9-10, literature	The grades 9-10 band: scaffolding at the high end by the end of grade 9, independence there by the end of grade 10
   RL.11-12.10	Grades 11-12, literature	The grades 11-CCR band: scaffolding at the high end in grade 11, independence there by the end of grade 12
   RI.6.10	Grade 6, informational text	Literary nonfiction in the grades 6-8 band, with scaffolding as needed at the high end
   RI.7.10	Grade 7, informational text	The same band for nonfiction, with scaffolding still allowed at the high end
   RI.8.10	Grade 8, informational text	Literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 6-8 band, read independently
   RI.9-10.10	Grades 9-10, informational text	Nonfiction in the grades 9-10 band, moving from scaffolding (grade 9) to independence (grade 10) at the high end
   RI.11-12.10	Grades 11-12, informational text	Nonfiction in the grades 11-CCR band, independent at the high end by the end of grade 12
   RH.6-8.10	Grades 6-8, history/social studies	History and social studies texts in the grades 6-8 band, independently by the end of grade 8
   RH.9-10.10	Grades 9-10, history/social studies	History texts in the grades 9-10 band, independently by the end of grade 10
   RH.11-12.10	Grades 11-12, history/social studies	History texts in the grades 11-CCR band, independently by the end of grade 12
   RST.6-8.10	Grades 6-8, science and technical	Science and technical texts in the grades 6-8 band, independently by the end of grade 8
   RST.9-10.10	Grades 9-10, science and technical	Science and technical texts in the grades 9-10 band, independently by the end of grade 10
   RST.11-12.10	Grades 11-12, science and technical	Science and technical texts in the grades 11-CCR band, independently by the end of grade 12

   Model text. Willa Cather's novel O Pioneers! was published in 1913 and opens on the Nebraska prairie, where many immigrant families from Sweden, Norway, Bohemia and other places had settled to farm. One sentence is left out of the first paragraph and marked [...]. Read the passage aloud while students follow. Then think aloud through the four examples, showing students what an expert reader does at each sticking point.

   1One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. [...] At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.

   2On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was much too big for him and made him look like a little old man. His shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times and left a long stretch of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears; his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask for help, so he sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole beside him, whimpering, “My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!” At the top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had been left at the store while his sister went to the doctor’s office, and in her absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature had never been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her master was sunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and this village was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last he seemed to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up and ran toward her in his heavy shoes.

   • Break a long sentence into parts

     Paragraph 1: "The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end." How can a reader keep hold of a sentence this long?

     Result: Find the core first: "The main street was a road." Then attach the add-ons one at a time: what the road was like ("deeply rutted," "now frozen hard"), where it started (the railway station and the grain elevator) and where it ended (the lumber yard and the horse pond). The sentence is a map of the town from north to south.

   • Use context for an unfamiliar word

     Paragraph 1: "At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets." What are hitch-bars?

     Result: The rest of the sentence gives the clue: horses still "harnessed to farm wagons" are waiting along the street, so hitch-bars must be rails where riders and drivers tied their horses. A reader does not need a dictionary here; the sentence explains its own word. Writing a quick margin note ("posts for tying horses") keeps the meaning from slipping away.

   • Meet the knowledge demands

     The novel begins "One January day, thirty years ago." When does the story take place, and why does that matter?

     Result: The book came out in 1913, so "thirty years ago" points to the early 1880s, when the prairie had only recently been settled by farm families. Knowing that explains details that might otherwise seem odd: horses and wagons instead of cars, wooden sidewalks, and a town that depends on its railway station and grain elevator.

   • Monitor a change in focus

     Paragraph 2 opens: "On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly." What should a reader notice here?

     Result: The camera has moved. Paragraph 1 surveys a whole town from a distance; paragraph 2 closes in on one small person. Noticing a shift like this is part of monitoring: a reader who expects more description of the town will be confused, while a reader who notices the shift is ready to meet the first character.

   Close by having students name which example used which strategy: breaking a sentence into parts, context clues, background knowledge, and noticing the structure. Post the four as a strategy list for the rest of the period.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   A harder kind of text. Mary Austin (1868-1934) lived for years in the desert country of eastern California, between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley, and wrote about it in The Land of Little Rain (1903). Her nonfiction is complex in a different way from Cather's novel: it uses long, packed sentences, unusual word order and figurative language to describe real places. The three paragraphs below come one after another in the book's first chapter.

   1Since this is a hill country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up into a wide, pale sky. Here you have no rain when all the earth cries for it, or quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence. A land of lost rivers, with little in it to love; yet a land that once visited must be come back to inevitably. If it were not so there would be little told of it.

   2This is the country of three seasons. From June on to November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain.

   3The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations to the seasonal limitations. Their whole duty is to flower and fruit, and they do it hardly, or with tropical luxuriance, as the rain admits. It is recorded in the report of the Death Valley expedition that after a year of abundant rains, on the Colorado desert was found a specimen of Amaranthus ten feet high. A year later the same species in the same place matured in the drought at four inches. One hopes the land may breed like qualities in her human offspring, not tritely to "try," but to do. Seldom does the desert herb attain the full stature of the type. Extreme aridity and extreme altitude have the same dwarfing effect, so that we find in the high Sierras and in Death Valley related species in miniature that reach a comely growth in mean temperatures. Very fertile are the desert plants in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning their foliage edge-wise toward the sun, growing silky hairs, exuding viscid gum. The wind, which has a long sweep, harries and helps them. It rolls up dunes about the stocky stems, encompassing and protective, and above the dunes, which may be, as with the mesquite, three times as high as a man, the blossoming twigs flourish and bear fruit.

   1. Read paragraph 1 once without stopping. Then ask each student to write one sentence: "This paragraph is mostly about ___." Compare a few answers; do not correct them yet.
   2. Break a sentence into parts together. Take "Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up into a wide, pale sky." Ask students to find what is "here" (winds and calms), then where (on the tilted mesas), then the add-on (dust devils dancing). Explain that a mesa is a hill with a flat top and steep sides, and a dust devil is a small whirlwind of dust.
   3. Let the writer define her own terms. Ask: "Where does Austin explain a word for you?" Students should find "quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence," in which she names a kind of storm and says what it is in the same phrase. Point out that writers of complex texts often do this.
   4. Check the first sentence again. Ask students to revise their "mostly about" sentence now. Discuss which strategy changed their understanding most, and how they would know, on their own, that a reread was needed.

   Grades 6-8 may stop after paragraph 1 and read paragraphs 2 and 3 with a partner during Independent Practice. Grades 9-12 read all three alone.

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Students read paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Austin passage on their own, with no help from the teacher. They mark a check in the margin wherever they could restate a sentence and a question mark wherever they could not, and they try at least one fix-up strategy on each question mark. When they finish, they write a three-sentence summary of the two paragraphs and list which strategy they used where. The quiz also uses both passages.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Copy the sentence from the Austin passage that was hardest for you and say what made it hard. (2) Name the strategy you used on it and say whether it worked.

   Teacher note on the texts: Cather calls Emil "a little Swede boy," the everyday term of her time for the Swedish immigrant families in the novel; his words "Her will fweeze!" show a five-year-old's speech. In the homework passage, Austin writes "the Indians" for the Native peoples of the desert, the term used in her time; the first chapter names some of them as the Ute, Paiute, Mojave and Shoshone.

   For homework: students read one more passage from each book on their own: two paragraphs that come later in the first chapter of O Pioneers!, and two later paragraphs from Austin's first chapter about the tree yucca, a desert plant with stiff, sword-shaped leaves.

   1“Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can’t get better; can’t get well.” The girl’s lip trembled. She looked fixedly up the bleak street as if she were gathering her strength to face something, as if she were trying with all her might to grasp a situation which, no matter how painful, must be met and dealt with somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of her heavy coat about her.

   2Carl did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He, too, was lonely. He was a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive for a boy’s. The lips had already a little curl of bitterness and skepticism. The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. When Carl turned away he said, “I’ll see to your team.” Alexandra went into the store to have her purchases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm before she set out on her long cold drive.

   1Nothing the desert produces expresses it better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. Tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the Sierras and coastwise hills where the first swings across the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age, tipped with panicles of fetid, greenish bloom. After death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes the moonlight fearful. Before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a creamy cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap, the Indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast it for their own delectation.

   2So it is that in those parts where man inhabits one sees young plants of Yucca arborensis infrequently. Other yuccas, cacti, low herbs, a thousand sorts, one finds journeying east from the coastwise hills. There is neither poverty of soil nor species to account for the sparseness of desert growth, but simply that each plant requires more room. So much earth must be preempted to extract so much moisture. The real struggle for existence, the real brain of the plant, is underground; above there is room for a rounded perfect growth. In Death Valley, reputed the very core of desolation, are nearly two hundred identified species.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of the O Pioneers! passage, the town "was trying not to be blown away." What does this description suggest?

   AThe townspeople were preparing to move to a safer place. BA storm had already knocked down several buildings. CThe small town seemed weak and exposed against the wind. DThe wind was blowing snow away from the main street.

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The town is "anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland." Using context, what is a tableland?

   AA high, flat stretch of land BA low valley beside a river CA field of tables at a market DA steep hillside of rocks

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to paragraph 1, why are the streets nearly empty at two o'clock in the afternoon?

   AThe stores had all closed for the rest of the day. BThe townspeople had gone to meet the next train. CA blizzard had warned everyone to stay at home. DShopkeepers were indoors and the children were in school.

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Cather writes that the houses looked "as if they had been moved in overnight" and that "None of them had any appearance of permanence." What does this tell the reader about the town?

   AIt was a busy city with many fine houses. BIt looked new and might not last. CIt had been built many years before. DIt was about to be torn down.

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What has happened to the boy's kitten in paragraph 2?

   AA dog chased it up a telegraph pole. BA storekeeper locked it out in the snow. CIt ran off after the boy's sister. DIt fell asleep on top of the store roof.

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Paragraph 2 says the village "was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts." Whose view of the town is this?

   AThe narrator's own final judgment of everyone in the town BThe view of the shopkeepers who stayed behind their windows CThe boy's view, as the narrator reports how it seems to him DThe sister's view, which she explains to the boy later on

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which detail from paragraph 2 best suggests that the boy's family has little money?

   A"He was about five years old." B"his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold" C"He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him." D"His shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times"

8. Question 8 of 20 · Short Answer

   Summarize paragraph 2 of the O Pioneers! passage in two or three sentences, in your own words.

   Show model answer

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Austin writes that in this hill country "one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them" (paragraph 1 of her passage). Why not?

   AThere are no hills high enough to feed any springs. BThe springs found are often bad water or barely flowing. CThe springs are guarded by the people who live nearby. DThe springs freeze solid during the long winter months.

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 1 ends: "A land of lost rivers, with little in it to love; yet a land that once visited must be come back to inevitably." What does the word "yet" signal?

    AA list of more reasons why the desert is hard to love BA cause, explaining why the rivers have been lost CA time order, showing what happens after a visit ends DA contrast: despite its harshness, people are drawn back

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to paragraph 2 of Austin's passage, during which months is the desert "blossoming, radiant, and seductive"?

    AFrom April until the hot season begins in June BFrom June until the storms end in November CFrom November until the rains end in April DIn every month when a little rain has fallen

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 2 ends: "These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain." What is the main idea of this sentence?

    AThe months of the year are different in the desert than elsewhere. BThe Colorado River floods the desert every year in spring. CThe desert seasons follow the rain, not the calendar. DThe wind from the Gulf brings snow instead of rain.

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Austin reports that one year a plant of Amaranthus grew "ten feet high," and that "A year later the same species in the same place matured in the drought at four inches." About how many times taller was the first plant?

    A2.5 times B30 times C6 times D40 times

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    "Very fertile are the desert plants in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning their foliage edge-wise toward the sun, growing silky hairs, exuding viscid gum." What are "expedients" in this sentence?

    AWays of dealing with a problem BSeeds that the plants scatter CLeaves that fall off in summer DPlaces where the plants grow

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Austin writes that "The wind, which has a long sweep, harries and helps them." According to paragraph 3, how does the wind help the plants?

    AIt carries rain to them from far mountains. BIt blows away the insects that eat them. CIt cools their leaves on the hottest days. DIt piles up dunes that shelter their stems.

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    What is the main idea of paragraph 3 of the Austin passage? State it in one sentence and give two details that support it.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student reading Austin loses track of meaning partway through a long sentence. Which strategy should the student try first?

    ASkip ahead to the end of the passage and read the last line BReread the sentence and break it into parts at its commas CLook up every word in the sentence before reading it again DAsk a classmate to tell what the sentence means instead

18. Question 18 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In the Common Core's three-part model of text complexity, which of these is a qualitative feature of a text?

    AThe average number of words in its sentences BThe number of pages it has from start to finish CThe levels of meaning a careful reader can find in it DHow interested a particular reader is in its topic

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    CCRA.R.10 asks students to read complex texts "independently and proficiently." Explain the difference between the two words, and give one sign that a student is reading a passage in both ways.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Choose a sentence from either passage that was hard for you (not one discussed in class). Copy it, say what made it hard, name the strategy you used, and paraphrase it.

    Show model answer

These are the grade-level standards that carry anchor CCRA.R.10 in grades 6-12, plus closely related anchors.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.