NEW Reading Anchor Pages for Grades 3–8
Annual Goals Connected to “Theme”
Standard Aligned Long-Term Planning Around Foundational Comprehension Goals
Anchor Pages prioritize the most foundational standards that students need to develop if they are to succeed in college and beyond. They include incremental learning targets that build toward one complex goal by providing learning objectives that naturally scaffold learning. Additionally, every Anchor Page includes assessments and instructional resources that teachers can use to help them deliver rigorous instruction and monitor progress.
This release explicitly engages students in utilizing the requisite skills needed in order to identify theme.
What Makes Anchor Pages Connected to Theme Unique?
Teaching Students to identify themes in stories isn’t easy. It requires them to grapple with and synthesize the details of big concepts like setting, character development, plot, and the author’s tone in order to effectively derive a deeper message embedded within all of that.
These Anchor Pages help to externalize the process of metacognition by including scaffolds that prompt students to think about the distinguishing elements within a story. This is accomplished by the inclusion of three elements:
- Verbal Example Prompts that teachers can use to model the internal dialogue that students should be developing.
- Graphic Organizers that capture thoughts and text evidence that students can use to draw conclusions about the theme of a text.
- Teaching Strategies connected to teaching practices (e.g. guided questions) and reading practices (e.g. using cloze sentences) that promote thinking that leads to identifying theme.
The quarterly objectives and assessments included in these pages are strategically scaffolded so that by the time students are performing at the level specified by the annual target, they can independently engage in the metacognitive processes they’d been practicing with support.
Use Them Now!
Grade 3: RL.3.2 Determine the Central Message
Grade 4: RL.4.2 Determine the Theme and Key Supporting Details
Grade 5: RL.5.2 Determine Theme & Supporting Details
Grade 6: RL.6.2 Explain Theme and Supporting Details
Grade 7: RL.7.2 Analyze Development of Theme in a Literary Text
Grade 8: RL.8.2 Analyze How Story Elements Develop Theme
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