CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2
The Standard
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts · College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify what a text is mostly saying, not just its general topic. They trace how events, examples, or claims build that meaning. They retell only the information needed to explain the text accurately.
What Mastery Looks Like
- For fiction, students state a theme as a full message and connect it to key events or character choices. For informational text, they explain the main point and how details develop it. Their summaries are accurate, brief, and free of personal opinions.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may give a one-word topic, such as friendship, instead of a full message about friendship. They may choose an interesting detail that is not supported across the text. Summaries often include opinions, minor details, or copied sentences.
How to Assess It
- Give students a short passage. Ask them to state its main idea or theme, list two supporting details, and write a two-sentence summary.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give pairs a short text and detail cards; students sort the cards into supports, related but unnecessary, and unrelated.
Ask, "What is the author saying about the topic, and where does that idea become clearer?" Students answer with two cited moments.
Play Summary Shrink: students reduce a paragraph to 20 words, then 10, while keeping the main point and strongest support.
Compare two news articles about the same event, then identify each article's main point and the details that shape it.
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Printable CCRA.R.2 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.2
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific detai...
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.2
Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.8.2
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective...
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