Kentucky Reading and Writing RI.11-12.2
The Standard
Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account.
Kentucky Academic Standards for Reading and Writing (2025) · Key Ideas and Details
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students identify at least two main ideas in an informational text. They track how each idea gains detail and explain how the ideas shape the writer's overall account.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student states two distinct ideas as full claims, not single-word topics. They use details from early and late in the text to show how the ideas develop and affect each other.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may name topics such as "sleep" and "school" instead of stating what the writer says about them. They may collect quotes for each idea without explaining how the ideas connect.
How to Assess It
- Hand out a one-page article on later school start times that addresses teen sleep and bus schedules. Ask students to state both ideas, cite an early and a late detail, and explain how the ideas connect.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Pairs highlight sleep evidence in blue and bus schedule evidence in yellow on a school start times article, then draw connecting arrows.
Ask students: "How does the bus schedule evidence complicate the article's point about teen sleep?"
Place four excerpt cards from the article in order, then have teams explain how each new card changes either idea.
Compare the article's ideas with your district's bell schedule and bus timetable; write one way the schedules support or complicate the writer's account.
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Printable RI.11-12.2 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to RI.11-12.2, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- RI.9-10.2
Determine central ideas of a text and analyze in detail their development over the course of a text, including how they emerge and are shaped and refined by spe...
- 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 refin...
- RL.11-12.2
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one ...
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