Maryland ELA RI.6.10

ELA6th GradeReading Informational Text

The Standard

By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, literary nonfiction in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Maryland College and Career Ready Standards for English Language Arts (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What This Standard Means

What Students Need to Do: Students read nonfiction on their own and make sense of its main points, details, and unfamiliar terms. They use headings, diagrams, and context to help with harder passages.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can explain the main point of a grade-level article and point to details that support it. With help on a harder passage, they can work through a dense section rather than skip it.
Common Misconceptions: Students may mistake an interesting detail for the main point. They may guess at a technical word without checking nearby sentences, or treat a diagram as decoration instead of information.
How to Assess It: Hand out a one-page article on stormwater runoff. Ask students to write its main point, two supporting details, and what “runoff” means in the article.

Lesson moves

Ways to Teach It

Give pairs a printed article about volcanoes and sticky notes; have them mark one main point, two supporting facts, and one unfamiliar term.
After reading an account of the 1906 earthquake, ask, “Which detail best explains why the fires spread?” Have students cite a sentence.
Play evidence match: students pair claims about a science article with supporting sentence cards, then explain why one card does not fit.
Give students a bike helmet fitting guide and ask them to list the fitting steps and find one safety check.

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