Compilation of Appendices for the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical

Subjects

GRADES 2 and 3

Appendix A:

Explanation of Text Complexity

Appendix B:

Compilation of Text Exemplars

Sample Performance Tasks

Appendix C:

Writing: Definitions of the Standards’ Three Text Types

Annotated Student Writing Samples

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Table of Contents

Appendix A

Explanation of Text Complexity 4

Appendix B

Grades 2 and 3 Text Exemplars 13

StoriesGannett, Ruth Stiles. My Father’s Dragon 13Averill, Esther. The Fire Cat 14Steig, William. Amos & Boris 15Shulevitz, Uri. The Treasure 15Cameron, Ann. The Stories Julian Tells 15MacLachlan, Patricia. Sarah, Plain and Tall 15Rylant, Cynthia. Henry and Mudge: The First Book of Their Adventures 16Stevens, Janet. Tops and Bottoms 16LaMarche, Jim. The Raft. 17Rylant, Cynthia. Poppleton in Winter 17Rylant, Cynthia. The Lighthouse Family: The Storm. 18Osborne, Mary Pope. The One-Eyed Giant (Book One of Tales from the Odyssey) 18Silverman, Erica. Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa 19PoetryDickinson, Emily. “Autumn.” 20Rossetti, Christina. “Who Has Seen the Wind?” 20Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Afternoon on a Hill.” 20Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” 20Field, Rachel. “Something Told the Wild Geese.” 20Hughes, Langston. “Grandpa’s Stories.” 20Jarrell, Randall. “A Bat Is Born.” 20Giovanni, Nikki. “Knoxville, Tennessee.” 21Merriam, Eve. “Weather.” 22Soto, Gary. “Eating While Reading.” 22Read-Aloud StoriesKipling, Rudyard. “How the Camel Got His Hump.” 22Thurber, James. The Thirteen Clocks 23White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web 23Selden, George. The Cricket in Times Square 24Babbitt, Natalie. The Search for Delicious 25Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bud, Not Buddy 25Say, Allen. The Sign Painter 26Read-Aloud PoetryLear, Edward. “The Jumblies.” 27Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin 28Johnson, Georgia Douglas. “Your World.” 29

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Eliot, T. S. “The Song of the Jellicles.” 29Fleischman, Paul. “Fireflies.” 29Informational TextsAliki. A Medieval Feast 30Gibbons, Gail. From Seed to Plant 31Milton, Joyce. Bats: Creatures of the Night 31Beeler, Selby. Throw Your Tooth on the Roof:Tooth Traditions Around the World. 31Leonard, Heather. Art Around the World 32Ruffin, Frances E. Martin Luther King and the March on Washington. 32St. George, Judith. So You Want to Be President? 32Einspruch, Andrew. Crittercam 32Kudlinski, Kathleen V. Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs 32Davies, Nicola. Bat Loves the Night.. 33Floca, Brian. Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 33Thomson, Sarah L. Where Do Polar Bears Live? 34Read-Aloud Informational TextsFreedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography 34Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges 35Wick, Walter. A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder 35Smith, David J. If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People 36Aliki. Ah, Music! 36Mark, Jan. The Museum Book: A Guide to Strange and Wonderful Collections 36D’Aluisio, Faith. What the World Eats 37Arnosky, Jim. Wild Tracks! A Guide to Nature’s Footprints 37Deedy, Carmen Agra. 14 Cows for America 37Sample Performance TasksSample Performance Tasks for Stories and Poetry 39Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts 39

Appendix C

Writing: Definitions of the Standards’ Three Text Types 41

Annotated Student Writing Samples

Grade 2Student Sample: Grade 2, Argument (Opinion)“Owl Moon” 43Student Sample: Grade 2, Narrative“My first tooth is gone” 45

Grade 3Student Sample: Grade 3, Informative/Explanatory“Horses” 46Student Sample: Grade 3, Narrative“When my Puppys Ranaway” 49

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Appendix A

Explanation of Text ComplexityOne of the key requirements of the Common Core State Standards for Reading is that all students must be able to comprehend texts of steadily increasing complexity as they progress through school. By the time they complete the core, students must be able to read and comprehend independently and proficiently the kinds of complex texts commonly found in college and careers. The first part of this section makes a research-based case for why the complexity of what students read matters. In brief, while reading demands in college, workforce training programs, and life in general have held steady or increased over the last half century, K–12 texts have actually declined in sophistication, and relatively little attention has been paid to students’ ability to read complex texts independently. These conditions have left a serious gap between many high school seniors’ reading ability and the reading requirements they will faceafter graduation. The second part of this section addresses how text complexity can be measured and made a regular part of instruction. It introduces a three-part model that blends qualitative and quantitative measures of text complexity with reader and task considerations. The section concludes with three annotated examples showing how the model can be used to assess the complexity of various kinds of texts appropriate for different grade levels.

Why Text Complexity MattersIn 2006, ACT, Inc., released a report called Reading Between the Lines that showed which skills differentiated those students who equaled or exceeded the benchmark score (21 out of 36) in the reading section of the ACT college admissions test from those who did not. Prior ACT research had shown that students achieving the benchmark score or better in reading—which only about half (51 percent) of the roughly half million test takers in the 2004–2005 academic year had done—had a high probability (75 percent chance) of earning a C or better in an introductory, credit-bearing course in U.S. history or psychology (two common reading-intensive courses taken by first-year college students) and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better in such a course.1

Surprisingly, what chiefly distinguished the performance of those students who had earned the benchmark score or better from those who had not was not their relative ability in making inferences while reading or answering questions related to particular cognitive processes, such as determining main ideas or determining the meaning of words and phrases in context. Instead, the clearest differentiator was students’ ability to answer questions associated with complex texts. Students scoring below benchmark performed no better than chance (25 percent correct) on four-option multiple-choice questions pertaining to passages rated as “complex” on a three-point qualitative rubric described in the report. These findings held for male and female students, students from all racial/ethnic groups, and students from families with widely varying incomes. The most important implication of this study was that a pedagogy focused only on “higher-order” or “critical” thinking was insufficient to ensure that students were ready for college and careers: what students could read, in terms of its complexity, was at least as important as what they could do with what they read.

The ACT report is one part of an extensive body of research attesting to the importance of text complexity in reading achievement. The clear, alarming picture that emerges from the evidence, briefly summarized below2, is that while the reading demands of college, workforce training programs, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past fifty years or so, K–12 texts have, if anything, become less demanding. This finding is the impetus behind the Standards’ strong emphasis on increasing text complexity as a key requirement in reading.

College, Careers, and Citizenship: Steady or Increasing Complexity of Texts and TasksResearch indicates that the demands that college, careers, and citizenship place on readers have either held steady or increased over roughly the last fifty years. The difficulty of college textbooks, as measured by Lexile scores, has not decreased in any block of time since 1962; it has, in fact, increased over that period (Stenner, Koons, & Swartz, in press). The word difficulty of every scientific journal and magazine from 1930 to 1990 examined by Hayes and Ward (1992) had actually increased, which is important in part because, as a 2005 College Board study (Milewski, Johnson, Glazer, & Kubota, 2005) found, college professors assign more readings from periodicals than do high school teachers. Workplace reading, measured in Lexiles, exceeds grade 12 complexity significantly, although there is considerable variation (Stenner, Koons, & Swartz, in press). The vocabulary difficulty of newspapers remained stable over the 1963–1991 period Hayes and his colleagues (Hayes, Wolfer, & Wolfe, 1996) studied.

Furthermore, students in college are expected to read complex texts with substantially greater independence (i.e., much less scaffolding) than are students in typical K–12 programs. College students are held more accountable for what they read on their own than are most students in high school (Erickson & Strommer, 1991; Pritchard, Wilson, & Yamnitz, 2007). College instructors assign readings, not necessarily explicated in class, for which students might be held accountable through exams, papers, presentations, or class discussions. Students in high school, by contrast, are rarely held accountable for what they are able to read independently (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007). This discrepancy in task demand, coupled with what we see below is a vast gap in text complexity, may help explain why only about half of the students taking the ACT Test in the 2004–2005 academic year could meet the benchmark score in reading (which also was the case in 2008–2009, the most recent year for which data are available) and why so few students in general are prepared for postsecondary reading (ACT, Inc., 2006, 2009).

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K–12 Schooling: Declining Complexity of Texts and a Lack of Reading of Complex Texts IndependentlyDespite steady or growing reading demands from various sources, K–12 reading texts have actually trended downward in difficulty in the last half century. Jeanne Chall and her colleagues (Chall, Conard, & Harris, 1977) found a thirteen year decrease from 1963 to 1975 in the difficulty of grade 1, grade 6, and (especially) grade 11 texts. Extending the period to 1991, Hayes, Wolfer, and Wolfe (1996) found precipitous declines (relative to the period from 1946 to 1962) in average sentence length and vocabulary level in reading textbooks for a variety of grades. Hayes also found that while science books were more difficult to read than literature books, only books for Advanced Placement (AP) classes had vocabulary levels equivalent to those of even newspapers of the time (Hayes & Ward, 1992). Carrying the research closer to the present day, Gary L. Williamson (2006) found a 350L (Lexile) gap between the difficulty of end-of-high school and college texts—a gap equivalent to 1.5 standard deviations and more than the Lexile difference between grade 4 and grade 8 texts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Although legitimate questions can be raised about the tools used to measure text complexity (e.g., Mesmer, 2008), what is relevant in these numbers is the general, steady decline—over time, across grades, and substantiated by several sources—in the difficulty and likely also the sophistication of content of the texts students have been asked to read in school since 1962.

There is also evidence that current standards, curriculum, and instructional practice have not done enough to foster the independent reading of complex texts so crucial for college and career readiness, particularly in the case of informational texts. K–12 students are, in general, given considerable scaffolding—assistance from teachers, class discussions, and the texts themselves (in such forms as summaries, glossaries, and other text features)—with reading that is already less complex overall than that typically required of students prior to 1962.3 What is more, students today are asked to read very little expository text—as little as 7 and 15 percent of elementary and middle school instructional reading, for example, is expository (Hoffman, Sabo, Bliss, & Hoy, 1994; Moss & Newton, 2002; Yopp & Yopp, 2006)—yet much research supports the conclusion that such text is harder for most students to read than is narrative text (Bowen & Roth, 1999; Bowen, Roth, & McGinn, 1999, 2002; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008), that students need sustained exposure to expository text to develop important reading strategies (Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris, 2008; Kintsch, 1998, 2009; McNamara, Graesser, & Louwerse, in press; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005; van den Broek, Lorch, Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001; van den Broek, Risden, & Husebye-Hartmann, 1995), and that expository text makes up the vast majority of the required reading in college and the workplace (Achieve, Inc., 2007). Worse still, what little expository reading students are asked to do is too often of the superficial variety that involves skimming and scanning for particular, discrete pieces of information; such reading is unlikely to prepare students for the cognitive demand of true understanding of complex text.

The Consequences: Too Many Students Reading at Too Low a LevelThe impact that low reading achievement has on students’ readiness for college, careers, and life in general is significant. To put the matter bluntly, a high school graduate who is a poor reader is a postsecondary student who must struggle mightily to succeed. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (Wirt, Choy, Rooney, Provasnik, Sen, & Tobin, 2004) reports that although needing to take one or more remedial/developmental courses of any sort lowers a student’s chance of eventually earning a degree or certificate, “the need for remedial reading appears to be the most serious barrier to degree completion” (p. 63). Only 30 percent of 1992 high school seniors who went on to enroll in postsecondary education between 1992 and 2000 and then took any remedial reading course went on to receive a degree or certificate, compared to 69 percent of the 1992 seniors who took no postsecondary remedial courses and 57 percent of those who took one remedial course in a subject other than reading or mathematics. Considering that 11 percent of those high school seniors required at least one remedial reading course, the societal impact of low reading achievement is as profound as its impact on the aspirations of individual students.

Reading levels among the adult population are also disturbingly low. The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy, 2007) reported that 14 percent of adults read prose texts at “below basic” level, meaning they could exhibit “no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills”; a similarly small number (13 percent) could read prose texts at the “proficient level,” meaning they could perform “more complex and challenging literacy activities” (p. 4). The percent of “proficient” readers had actually declined in a statistically significant way from 1992 (15 percent). This low and declining achievement rate may be connected to a general lack of reading. As reported by the National Endowment for the Arts (2004), the percent of U.S. adults reading literature dropped from 54.0 in 1992 to 46.7 in 2002, while the percent of adults reading any book also declined by 7 percent during the same time period. Although the decline occurred in all demographic groups, the steepest decline by far was among 18-to-24- and 25-to-34-year-olds (28 percent and 23 percent, respectively). In other words, the problem of lack of reading is not only getting worse but doing so at an accelerating rate. Although numerous factors likely contribute to the decline in reading, it is reasonable to conclude from the evidence presented above that the deterioration in overall reading ability, abetted by a decline in K–12 text complexity and a lack of focus on independent reading of complex texts, is a contributing factor.

Being able to read complex text independently and proficiently is essential for high achievement in college and the workplace and important in numerous life tasks. Moreover, current trends suggest that if students cannot read challenging texts with understanding—if they have not developed the skill, concentration, and stamina to read such texts—they will read less in general. In particular, if students cannot read complex expository text to gain information, they will likely turn to text-free or text-light sources, such as video,

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podcasts, and tweets. These sources, while not without value, cannot capture the nuance, subtlety, depth, or breadth of ideas developed through complex text. As Adams (2009) puts it, “There may one day be modes and methods of information delivery that are as efficient and powerful as text, but for now there is no contest. To grow, our students must read lots, and more specifically they must read lots of ‘complex’ texts—texts that offer them new language, new knowledge, and new modes of thought” (p. 182). A turning away from complex texts is likely to lead to a general impoverishment of knowledge, which, because knowledge is intimately linked with reading comprehension ability, will accelerate the decline in the ability to comprehend complex texts and the decline in the richness of text itself. This bodes ill for the ability of Americans to meet the demands placed upon them by citizenship in a democratic republic and the challenges of a highly competitive global marketplace of goods, services, and ideas.

It should be noted also that the problems with reading achievement are not “equal opportunity” in their effects: students arriving at school from less-educated families are disproportionately represented in many of these statistics (Bettinger & Long, 2009). The consequences of insufficiently high text demands and a lack of accountability for independent reading of complex texts in K–12 schooling are severe for everyone, but they are disproportionately so for those who are already most isolated from text before arriving at the schoolhouse door.

The Standards’ Approach to Text ComplexityTo help redress the situation described above, the Standards define a three-part model for determining how easy or difficult a particular text is to read as well as grade-by-grade specifications for increasing text complexity in successive years of schooling (Reading standard 10). These are to be used together with grade-specific standards that require increasing sophistication in students’ reading comprehension ability (Reading standards 1–9). The Standards thus approach the intertwined issues of what and how student read.

A Three-Part Model for Measuring Text ComplexityAs signaled by the graphic at right, the Standards’ model of text complexity consists of three equally important parts.

(1) Qualitative dimensions of text complexity. In the Standards, qualitative dimensions and qualitative factors refer to those aspects of text complexity best measured or only measurable by an attentive human reader, such as levels of meaning or purpose; structure; language conventionality and clarity; and knowledge demands.

(2) Quantitative dimensions of text complexity. The terms quantitative dimensions and quantitative factors refer to those aspects of text complexity, such as word length or frequency, sentence length, and text cohesion, that are difficult if not impossible for a human reader to evaluate efficiently, especially in long texts, and are thus today typically measured by computer software.

(3) Reader and task considerations. While the prior two elements of the model focus on the inherent complexity of text, variables specific to particular readers (such as motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and to particular tasks (such as purpose and the complexity of the task assigned and the questions posed) must also be considered when determining whether a text is appropriate for a given student. Such assessments are best made by teachers employing their professional judgment, experience, and knowledge of their students and the subject.

The Standards presume that all three elements will come into play when text complexity and appropriateness are determined. The following pages begin with a brief overview of just some of the currently available tools, both qualitative and quantitative, for measuring text complexity, continue with some important considerations for using text complexity with students, and conclude with a series of examples showing how text complexity measures, balanced with reader and task considerations, might be used with a number of different texts.

Qualitative and Quantitative Measures of Text ComplexityThe qualitative and quantitative measures of text complexity described below are representative of the best tools presently available. However, each should be considered only provisional; more precise, more accurate, and easier-to-use tools are urgently needed to help make text complexity a vital, everyday part of classroom instruction and curriculum planning.

Qualitative Measures of Text ComplexityUsing qualitative measures of text complexity involves making an informed decision about the difficulty of a text in terms of one or more factors discernible to a human reader applying trained judgment to the task. In the Standards, qualitative measures, along with professional judgment in matching a text to reader and task, serve as a necessary complement and sometimes as a corrective to quantitative measures, which, as discussed below, cannot (at least at present) capture all of the elements that make a text easy or challenging to read and are not equally successful in rating the complexity of all categories of text.

Built on prior research, the four qualitative factors described below are offered here as a first step in the development of robust tools for the qualitative analysis of text complexity. These factors are presented as continua of difficulty rather than as a succession of

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discrete “stages” in text complexity. Additional development and validation would be needed to translate these or other dimensions into, for example, grade-level- or grade-band-specific rubrics. The qualitative factors run from easy (left-hand side) to difficult (right-hand side). Few, if any, authentic texts will be low or high on all of these measures, and some elements of the dimensions are better suited to literary or to informational texts.

(1) Levels of Meaning (literary texts) or Purpose (informational texts). Literary texts with a single level of meaning tend to be easier to read than literary texts with multiple levels of meaning (such as satires, in which the author’s literal message is intentionally at odds with his or her underlying message). Similarily, informational texts with an explicitly stated purpose are generally easier to comprehend than informational texts with an implicit, hidden, or obscure purpose.

(2) Structure. Texts of low complexity tend to have simple, well-marked, and conventional structures, whereas texts of high complexity tend to have complex, implicit, and (particularly in literary texts) unconventional structures. Simple literary texts tend to relate events in chronological order, while complex literary texts make more frequent use of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and other manipulations of time and sequence. Simple informational texts are likely not to deviate from the conventions of common genres and subgenres, while complex informational texts are more likely to conform to the norms and conventions of a specific discipline. Graphics tend to be simple and either unnecessary or merely supplementary to the meaning of texts of low complexity, whereas texts of high complexity tend to have similarly complex graphics, graphics whose interpretation is essential to understanding the text, and graphics that provide an independent source of information within a text. (Note that many books for the youngest students rely heavily on graphics to convey meaning and are an exception to the above generalization.)

(3) Language Conventionality and Clarity. Texts that rely on literal, clear, contemporary, and conversational language tend to be easier to read than texts that rely on figurative, ironic, ambiguous, purposefully misleading, archaic or otherwise unfamiliar language or on general academic and domain-specific vocabulary.

(4) Knowledge Demands. Texts that make few assumptions about the extent of readers’ life experiences and the depth of their cultural/literary and content/discipline knowledge are generally less complex than are texts that make many assumptions in one or more of those areas.

Figure 2: Qualitative Dimensions of Text Complexity

Levels of Meaning (literary texts) or Purpose (informational texts) Single level of meaning → Multiple levels of meaning Explicitly stated purpose → Implicit purpose, may be hidden or obscure

Structure Simple → Complex Explicit → Implicit Conventional →Unconventional (chiefly literary texts) Events related in chronological order → Events related out of chronological order (chiefly literary texts) Traits of a common genre or subgenre → Traits specific to a particular discipline (chiefly informational texts) Simple graphics → Sophisticated graphics Graphics unnecessary or merely supplementary to understanding the text →Graphics essential to understanding the text and

may provide information not otherwise conveyed in the text

Language Conventionality and Clarity Literal → Figurative or ironic Clear →Ambiguous or purposefully misleading Contemporary, familiar →Archaic or otherwise unfamiliar Conversational →General academic and domain-specific

Knowledge Demands: Life Experiences (literary texts) Simple theme →Complex or sophisticated themes Single themes → Multiple themes Common, everyday experiences or clearly fantastical situations →Experiences distinctly different from one’s own Single perspective →Multiple perspectives Perspective(s) like one’s own → Perspective(s) unlike or in opposition to one’s own

Knowledge Demands: Cultural/Literary Knowledge (chiefly literary texts) Everyday knowledge and familiarity with genre conventions required →Cultural and literary knowledge useful

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Low intertextuality (few if any references/allusions to other texts) →High intertextuality (many references/allusions to other texts)

Knowledge Demands: Content/Discipline Knowledge (chiefly informational texts) Everyday knowledge and familiarity with genre conventions required →Extensive, perhaps specialized discipline-specific

content knowledge required Low intertextuality (few if any references to/citations of other texts) →High intertextuality (many references to/citations of

other texts)

Adapted from ACT, Inc. (2006). Reading between the lines: What the ACT reveals about college readiness in reading. Iowa City, IA: Author; Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy. (2010). Time to act: An agenda for advancing adolescent literacy for college and career success. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York; Chall, J. S., Bissex, G. L., Conrad, S. S., & Harris-Sharples, S. (1996). Qualitative assessment of text difficulty: A practical guide for teachers and writers. Cambridge, UK: Brookline Books; Hess, K., & Biggam, S. (2004). A discussion of “increasing text complexity.” Published by the New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont departments of education as part of the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP). Retrieved from www.nciea.org/publications/TextComplexity_KH05.pdf

Quantitative Measures of Text Complexity

A number of quantitative tools exist to help educators assess aspects of text complexity that are better measured by algorithm than by a human reader. The discussion is not exhaustive, nor is it intended as an endorsement of one method or program over another. Indeed, because of the limits of each of the tools, new or improved ones are needed quickly if text complexity is to be used effectively in the classroom and curriculum.

Numerous formulas exist for measuring the readability of various types of texts. Such formulas, including the widely used Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test, typically use word length and sentence length as proxies for semantic and syntactic complexity, respectively (roughly, the complexity of the meaning and sentence structure). The assumption behind these formulas is that longer words and longer sentences are more difficult to read than shorter ones; a text with many long words and/or sentences is thus rated by these formulas as harder to read than a text with many short words and/or sentences would be. Some formulas, such as the Dale-Chall Readability Formula, substitute word frequency for word length as a factor, the assumption here being that less familiar words are harder to comprehend than familiar words. The higher the proportion of less familiar words in a text, the theory goes, the harder that text is to read. While these readability formulas are easy to use and readily available—some are even built into various word processing applications—their chief weakness is that longer words, less familiar words, and longer sentences are not inherently hard to read. In fact, series of short, choppy sentences can pose problems for readers precisely because these sentences lack the cohesive devices, such as transition words and phrases, that help establish logical links among ideas and thereby reduce the inference load on readers.

Like Dale-Chall, the Lexile Framework for Reading, developed by MetaMetrics, Inc., uses word frequency and sentence length to produce a single measure, called a Lexile, of a text’s complexity. The most important difference between the Lexile system and traditional readability formulas is that traditional formulas only assign a score to texts, whereas the Lexile Framework can place both readers and texts on the same scale. Certain reading assessments yield Lexile scores based on student performance on the instrument; some reading programs then use these scores to assign texts to students. Because it too relies on word familiarity and sentence length as proxies for semantic and syntactic complexity, the Lexile Framework, like traditional formulas, may underestimate the difficulty of texts that use simple, familiar language to convey sophisticated ideas, as is true of much high-quality fiction written for adults and appropriate for older students. For this reason and others, it is possible that factors other than word familiarity and sentence length contribute to text difficulty. In response to such concerns, MetaMetrics has indicated that it will release the qualitative ratings it assigns to some of the texts it rates and will actively seek to determine whether one or more additional factors can and should be added to its quantitative measure. Other readability formulas also exist, such as the ATOS formula associated with the Accelerated Reader program developed by Renaissance Learning. ATOS uses word difficulty (estimated grade level), word length, sentence length, and text length (measured in words) as its factors. Like the Lexile Framework, ATOS puts students and texts on the same scale.

A nonprofit service operated at the University of Memphis, Coh-Metrix attempts to account for factors in addition to those measured by readability formulas. The Coh-Metrix system focuses on the cohesiveness of a text—basically, how tightly the text holds together. A high-cohesion text does a good deal of the work for the reader by signaling relationships among words, sentences, and ideas using repetition, concrete language, and the like; a low-cohesion text, by contrast, requires the reader him- or herself to make many of the connections needed to comprehend the text. Highcohesion texts are not necessarily “better” than low-cohesion texts, but they are easier to read.

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The standard Coh-Metrix report includes information on more than sixty indices related to text cohesion, so it can be daunting to the layperson or even to a professional educator unfamiliar with the indices. Coh-Metrix staff have worked to isolate the most revealing, informative factors from among the many they consider, but these “key factors” are not yet widely available to the public, nor have the results they yield been calibrated to the Standards’ text complexity grade bands. The greatest value of these factors may well be the promise they offer of more advanced and usable tools yet to come.

Reader and Task ConsiderationsThe use of qualitative and quantitative measures to assess text complexity is balanced in the Standards’ model by the expectation that educators will employ professional judgment to match texts to particular students and tasks. Numerous considerations go into such matching. For example, harder texts may be appropriate for highly knowledgeable or skilled readers, and easier texts may be suitable as an expedient for building struggling readers’ knowledge or reading skill up to the level required by the Standards. Highly motivated readers are often willing to put in the extra effort required to read harder texts that tell a story or contain information in which they are deeply interested. Complex tasks may require the kind of information contained only in similarly complex texts.

Numerous factors associated with the individual reader are relevant when determining whether a given text is appropriate for him or her. The RAND Reading Study Group identified many such factors in the 2002 report Reading for Understanding:

The reader brings to the act of reading his or her cognitive capabilities (attention, memory, critical analytic ability, inferencing, visualization); motivation (a purpose for reading, interest in the content, self-efficacy as a reader); knowledge (vocabulary and topic knowledge, linguistic and discourse knowledge, knowledge of comprehension strategies); and experiences.

As part of describing the activity of reading, the RAND group also named important task-related variables, including the reader’s purpose (which might shift over the course of reading), “the type of reading being done, such as skimming (getting the gist of the text) or studying (reading the text with the intent of retaining the information for a period of time),” and the intended outcome, which could include “an increase in knowledge, a solution to some real world problem, and/or engagement with the text.”4

Key Considerations in Implementing Text Complexity

Texts and Measurement ToolsThe tools for measuring text complexity are at once useful and imperfect. Each of the qualitative and quantitative tools described above has its limitations, and none is completely accurate. The development of new and improved text complexity tools should follow the release of the Standards as quickly as possible. In the meantime, the Standards recommend that multiple quantitative measures be used whenever possible and that their results be confirmed or overruled by a qualitative analysis of the text in question.

Certain measures are less valid or inappropriate for certain kinds of texts. Current quantitative measures are suitable for prose and dramatic texts. Until such time as quantitative tools for capturing poetry’s difficulty are developed, determining whether a poem is appropriately complex for a given grade or grade band will necessarily be a matter of a qualitative assessment meshed with reader-task considerations. Furthermore, texts for kindergarten and grade 1 may not be appropriate for quantitative analysis, as they often contain difficult-to-assess features designed to aid early readers in acquiring written language. The Standards’ poetry and K–1 text exemplars were placed into grade bands by expert teachers drawing on classroom experience.

Many current quantitative measures underestimate the challenge posed by complex narrative fiction. Quantitative measures of text complexity, particularly those that rely exclusively or in large part on word- and sentence-level factors, tend to assign sophisticated works of literature excessively low scores. For example, as illustrated in example 2 below, some widely used quantitative measures, including the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test and the Lexile Framework for Reading, rate the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Grapes of Wrath as appropriate for grades 2–3. This counterintuitive result emerges because works such as Grapes often express complex ideas in relatively commonplace language (familiar words and simple syntax), especially in the form of dialogue that mimics everyday speech. Until widely available quantitative tools can better account for factors recognized as making such texts challenging, includingmultiple levels of meaning and mature themes, preference should likely be given to qualitative measures of text complexity when evaluating narrative fiction intended for students in grade 6 and above.

Measures of text complexity must be aligned with college and career readiness expectations for all students. Qualitative scales of text complexity should be anchored at one end by descriptions of texts representative of those required in typical first-year credit-bearing college courses and in workforce training programs. Similarly, quantitative measures should identify the college- and career-ready reading level as one endpoint of the scale. MetaMetrics, for, example, has realigned its Lexile ranges to match the Standards’ text complexity grade bands and has adjusted upward its trajectory of reading comprehension development through the grades to indicate that all students should be reading at the college and career readiness level by no later than the end of high school.

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Figure 3: Text Complexity Grade Bands and Associated Lexile Ranges (in Lexiles)Text Complexity GradeBand in the Standards

Old Lexile Ranges Lexile Ranges Aligned toCCR expectations

K–1 N/A N/A2–3 450–725 450–7904–5 645–845 770–9806–8 860–1010 955–11559–10 960–1115 1080–1305

11–CCR 1070–1220 1215–1355

Readers and TasksStudents’ ability to read complex text does not always develop in a linear fashion. Although the progression of Reading standard 10 (see below) defines required grade-by-grade growth in students’ ability to read complex text, the development of this ability in individual students is unlikely to occur at an unbroken pace. Students need opportunities to stretch their reading abilities but also to experience the satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading within them, both of which the Standards allow for. As noted above, such factors as students’ motivation, knowledge, and experiences must also come into play in text selection. Students deeply interested in a given topic, for example, may engage with texts on that subject across a range of complexity. Particular tasks may also require students to read harder texts than they would normally be required to. Conversely, teachers who have had success using particular texts that are easier than those required for a given grade band should feel free to continue to use them so long as the general movement during a given school year is toward texts of higher levels of complexity.

Students reading well above and well below grade-band level need additional support. Students for whom texts within their text complexity grade band (or even from the next higher band) present insufficient challenge must be given the attention and resources necessary to develop their reading ability at an appropriately advanced pace. On the other hand, students who struggle greatly to read texts within (or even below) their text complexity grade band must be given the support needed to enable them to read at a grade-appropriate level of complexity.

Even many students on course for college and career readiness are likely to need scaffolding as they master higher levels of text complexity. As they enter each new grade band, many students are likely to need at least some extra help as they work to comprehend texts at the high end of the range of difficulty appropriate to the band. For example, many students just entering grade 2 will need some support as they read texts that are advanced for the grades 2–3 text complexity band. Although such support is educationally necessary and desirable, instruction must move generally toward decreasing scaffolding and increasing independence, with the goal of students reading independently and proficiently within a given grade band by the end of the band’s final year (continuing the previousexample, the end of grade 3).

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The Standards’ Grade-Specific Text Complexity DemandsAs illustrated in figure 4, text complexity in the Standards is defined in grade bands: grades 2–3, 4–5, 6–8, 9–10, and 11–CCR.5 Students in the first year(s) of a given band are expected by the end of the year to read and comprehend proficiently within the band, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. Students in the last year of a band are expected by the end of the year to read and comprehend independently and proficiently within the band.

Figure 4: The Progression of Reading Standard 10Grade(s) Reading Standard 10 (individual text types omitted)

K Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.1 With prompting and support, read prose and poetry [informational texts] of appropriate complexity for grade 1.2 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts] in the grades 2–3 text complexity band

proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.3 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts] at the high end of the grades 2–3 text

complexity band independently and proficiently.4 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts] in the grades 4–5 text complexity band

proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.5 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts] at the high end of the grades 4–5 text

complexity band independently and proficiently.6 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts,

science/technical texts] in the grades 6–8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

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

8 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] at the high end of the grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

9-10 By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] in the grades 9–10 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] at the high end of the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

11-12 By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature [informational texts, history/social studies texts, science/technical texts] at the high end of the grades 11–CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.

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Appendix B

Exemplars of Reading Text Complexity, Quality, and Range

Background InformationThe process of text selection was guided by the following criteria:

Complexity. Appendix A describes in detail a three-part model of measuring text complexity based on qualitative and quantitative indices of inherent text difficulty balanced with educators’ professional judgment in matching readers and texts in light of particular tasks. In selecting texts to serve as exemplars, the work group began by soliciting contributions from teachers, educational leaders, and researchers who have experience working with students in the grades for which the texts have been selected. These contributors were asked to recommend texts that they or their colleagues have used successfully with students in a given grade band. The work group made final selections based in part on whether qualitative and quantitative measures indicated that the recommended texts were of sufficient complexity for the grade band. For those types of texts—particularly poetry and multimedia sources—for which these measures are not as well suited, professional judgment necessarily played a greater role in selection.

Quality. While it is possible to have high-complexity texts of low inherent quality, the work group solicited only texts of recognized value. From the pool of submissions gathered from outside contributors, the work group selected classic or historically significant texts as well as contemporary works of comparable literary merit, cultural significance, and rich content.

Range. After identifying texts of appropriate complexity and quality, the work group applied other criteria to ensure that the samples presented in each band represented as broad a range of sufficiently complex, high quality texts as possible. Among the factors considered were initial publication date, authorship, and subject matter.

Copyright and PermissionsFor those exemplar texts not in the public domain, we secured permissions and in some cases employed a conservative interpretation of Fair Use, which allows limited, partial use of copyrighted text for a nonprofit educational purpose as long as that purpose does not impair the rights holder’s ability to seek a fair return for his or her work. In instances where we could not employ Fair Use and have been unable to secure permission, we have listed a title without providing an excerpt. Thus, some short texts are not excerpted here, as even short passages from them would constitute a substantial portion of the entire work. In addition, illustrations and other graphics in texts are generally not reproduced here. Such visual elements are particularly important in texts for the youngest students and in many informational texts for readers of all ages. (Using the qualitative criteria outlined in Appendix A, the work group considered the importance and complexity of graphical elements when placing texts in bands.)

When excerpts appear, they serve only as stand-ins for the full text. The Standards require that students engage with appropriately complex literary and informational works; such complexity is best found in whole texts rather than passages from such texts.

Please note that these texts are included solely as exemplars in support of the Standards. Any additional use of those texts that are not in the public domain, such as for classroom use or curriculum development, requires independent permission from the rights holders. The texts may not be copied or distributed in any way other than as part of the overall Common Core State Standards Initiative documents.

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How to Read This DocumentExemplars are divided into text types matching those required in the Standards for a given grade. Grades 2 and 3 exemplars are separated into stories, poetry, and informational texts, including a section of read-aloud texts. Citations introduce each excerpt, and additional citations are included for texts not excerpted in the appendix. Within each grade band and after each text type, sample performance tasks are included for select texts.

Media TextsSelected excerpts are accompanied by annotated links to related media texts freely available online at the time of the publication of this document.

Text ExemplarsThe following text samples serve to exemplify the level of complexity and quality that the Standards require all students in a given grade band, Grades 2 -3, to engage with. Additionally, they are suggestive of the breadth of texts that students should encounter in the text types required by the Standards. The choices should serve as useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality, and range for their own classrooms. They expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list.

STORIES (2-3)

Gannett, Ruth Stiles. My Father’s Dragon. Illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett. New York: Random House, 1948. (1948).From Chapter Seven “My Father Meets a Lion”

“Who are you?” the lion yelled at my father.

“My name is Elmer Elevator.”

“Where do you think you are going?”

“I’m going home,” said my father.

“That’s what you think!” said the lion. “Ordinarily I’d save you for afternoon tea, but I happen to be upset enough and hungry enough to eat you right now.” And he picked up my father in his front paws to feel how fat he was.

My father said, “Oh, please, Lion, before you eat me, tell me why you are so particularly upset today.”

“It’s my mane,” said the lion, as he was figuring out how many bites a little boy would make. “You see what a dreadful mess it is, and I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. My mother is coming over on the dragon this afternoon, and if she sees me this way I’m afraid she’ll stop my allowance. She can’t stand messy manes! But I’m going to eat you now, so it won’t make any difference to you.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” said my father, “and I’ll give you just the things you need to make your mane a tidy and beautiful. I have them here in my pack.”

“You do?” said the lion, “Well, give them to me, and perhaps I’ll save you for afternoon tea after all,” and he put my father down on the ground.”

My father opened the pack and took out the comb and the brush and the seven hair ribbons of different colors.“Look,” he said, “I’ll show you what to do on your forelock, where you can watch me. First you brush a while, and then you comb, and then you brush again until all the twigs and snarls are gone. Then you divide it up into three and braid it like this and tie a ribbon around the end.”

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As my father was doing this, the lion watched very carefully and began to look much happier. When my father tied the ribbon he was all smiles. “Oh, that’s wonderful, really wonderful!” said the lion. “Let me have the comb and brush and see if I can do it.” So my father gave him the comb and brush and the lion began busily grooming his mane. As a matter of fact, he was so busy that he didn’t even know when my father left.

From MY FATHER’S DRAGON by Ruth Stiles Gannett, copyright 1948 by Random House, Inc. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. Any additional use of this text, such as for classroom use or curriculum development, requires independent permission from Random House, Inc.

Averill, Esther. The Fire Cat. New York: HarperCollins, 1960. (1960)From “The Fire Cat”

Joe took Pickles to the Chief, who was sitting at his desk.

“Oh!” said the Chief. “I know this young cat. He is the one who chases little cats.”

“How do you know?” asked Joe.

The Chief answered, “A Fire Chief knows many things.”

Just then the telephone began to ring. “Hello,” said the Chief. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Goodkind. Yes, Pickles is here. He came with Joe. What did you say? You think Pickles would like to live in our firehouse? Well, we shall see. Thank you, Mrs. Goodkind. Good-bye.”

The Chief looked at Pickles and said, “Mrs. Goodkind says you are not a bad cat. And Joe likes you. I will let you live here IF you will learn to be a good firehouse cat.”

Pickles walked quietly up the stairs after Joe. Joe and Pickles went into a room where the firemen lived.

The men were pleased to have a cat. They wanted to play with Pickles. But suddenly the fire bell rang. All the firemen ran to a big pole and down they went. The pole was the fast way to get to their trucks. Pickles could hear the trucks start up and rush off to the fire.

Pickles said to himself, “I must learn to do what the firemen do, I must learn to slide down the pole.”

He jumped and put his paws around the pole. Down he fell with a BUMP.

“Bumps or no bumps, I must try again,” said Pickles. Up the stairs he ran. Down the pole he came – and bumped.

But by the time the firemen came back from the fire, Pickles could slide down the pole.

“What a wonderful cat you are!” said the firemen. The Chief did not say anything.

Pickles said to himself, “I must keep learning everything I can.” So he learned to jump up on one of the big trucks. And he learned to sit up straight on the seat while the truck raced to a fire.

“What a wonderful cat you are!” said the firemen. The Chief did not say anything.

Pickles said to himself, “Now I must learn to help the firemen with their work.”

At the next fire, he jumped down from the truck. He ran to a big hose, put his paws around it, and tried to help a fireman shoot water at the flames.

“What a wonderful cat you are!” said the firemen. The Chief did not say anything.

The next day the Chief called all the firemen to his desk. Then he called for Pickles. Pickles did not know what was going to happen. He said to himself, “Maybe the Chief does not like the way I work. Maybe he wants to send me back to my old yard.” But Pickles went to the Chief.

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At the Chief’s desk stood all the firemen – and Mrs. Goodkind! The Chief said to Pickles, “I have asked Mrs. Goodkind to come because she was your first friend. Pickles, jump up on my desk. I have something to say to you.”

Pickles jumped up on the desk and looked at the Chief. Out of the desk the Chief took – a little fire hat!

“Pickles,” said the Chief, “I have watched you at your work. You have worked hard. The time has come for you to know that you are now our Fire Cat.”

And with these words, the Chief put the little hat on Pickles’ head.

COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY ESTHER AVERILL. Copyright © renewed 1988. Used by permission of Harper Collins Publishers

Steig, William. Amos & Boris. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. (1971)

Shulevitz, Uri. The Treasure. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. (1978)

Cameron, Ann. The Stories Julian Tells. New York: Random House, 1981. (1981)

MacLachlan, Patricia. Sarah, Plain and Tall. New York: HarperCollins, 1985. (1985)From Chapter I

“Did Mama sing every day?” asked Caleb. “Every-single-day?” He sat close to the fire, his chin in his hand. It was dusk, and the dogs lay beside him on the warm hearthstones.

“Every-single-day,” I told him for the second time this week. For the twentieth time this month. The hundredth time this year? And the past few years?

“And did Papa sing, too?”

“Yes. Papa sang, too. Don’t get so close, Caleb. You’ll heat up.”

He pushed his chair back. It made a hollow scraping sound on the hearthstones. And the dogs stirred. Lottie, small and black, wagged her tail and lifted her head. Nick slept on.

I turned the bread dough over and over on the marble slab on the kitchen table.

“Well, Papa doesn’t sing anymore,” said Caleb very softly. A log broke apart and crackled in the fireplace. He looked up at me. “What did I look like when I was born?”

“You didn’t have any clothes on,” I told him.

“I know that,” he said.

“You looked like this.” I held the bread dough up in a round pale ball.

“I had hair,” said Caleb seriously.

“Not enough to talk about,” I said.

“And she named me Caleb,” he went on, filling in the old familiar story.

“I would have named you Troublesome,” I said, making Caleb smile.

“And Mama handed me to you in the yellow blanket and said…” He waited for me to finish the story. “And said…?”

I sighed. “And Mama said. ‘Isn’t he beautiful, Anna?’”

“And I was,” Caleb finished.

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Caleb thought the story was over, and I didn’t tell him what I had really thought. He was homely and plain, and he had a terrible holler and a horrid smell. But these were not the worst of him. Mama died the next morning. That was the worst thing about Caleb.

“Isn’t he beautiful, Anna?” her last words to me. I had gone to bed thinking how wretched he looked. And I forgot to say good night.

I wiped my hands on my apron and went to the window. Outside, the prairie reached out and touched the places where the sky came down. Though the winter was nearly over, there were patches of snow everywhere. I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And then the cousins and aunts and uncles had come and tried to fill up the house. But they couldn’t.

Slowly, one by one, they left. And then the days seemed long and dark like winter days, even though it wasn’t winter. And Papa didn’t sing.

COPYRIGHT © 1985 BY PATRICIA MACLACHLAN. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers

Rylant, Cynthia. Henry and Mudge: The First Book of Their Adventures. Illustrated by Suçie Stevenson. New York: Atheneum, 1996. (1987)From “Henry and Mudge”

Every day when Henry woke up, he saw Mudge’s big head. And every day when Mudge woke up, he saw Henry’s small face.

They ate breakfast at the same time; they ate supper at the same time.

And when Henry was at school, Mudge just lay around and waited. Mudge never went for a walk without Henry again. And Henry never worried that Mudge would leave.

Because sometimes, in their dreams, they saw long silent roads, big wide fields, deep streams, and pine trees.

In those dreams, Mudge was alone and Henry was alone. So when Mudge woke up and knew Henry was with him, he remembered the dream and stayed closer.

And when Henry woke up and knew Mudge was with him, he remembered the dream

and the lookingand the calling and the fear and he knew he would never lose Mudge again.

Reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division from HENRY AND MUDGE: The First Book by Cynthia Rylant. Text copyright © 1987 Cynthia Rylant.

Stevens, Janet. Tops and Bottoms. New York: Harcourt, 1985. (1995)

Once upon a time there lived a very lazy bear who had lots of money and lots of land. His father had been a hard worker and a smart business bear, and he had given all of his wealth to his son.

But all Bear wanted to do was sleep.

Not far down the road lived a hare. Although Hare was clever, he sometimes got into trouble. He had once owned land, too, but now he had nothing. He had lost a risky bet with a tortoise and had sold off all of his land to Bear to pay off the debt.

Hare and his family were in very bad shape.

“The children are so hungry Father Hare! We must think of something!” Mrs. Hare cried one day. So Hare and Mrs. Hare put their heads together and cooked up a plan.

[…]

Bear stared at his pile. “But, Hare, all the best parts are in your half!”

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“You chose the tops, Bear,” Hare said.

“Now, Hare, you’ve tricked me. You plant this field again—and this season I want the bottoms!”Hare agreed. “It’s a done deal, Bear.”

LaMarche, Jim. The Raft. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. (2000)

Somehow, on the river, it seemed like summer would never end. But of course it did.

On my last day, I got up extra early and crept down to the dock. The air was cool and a low pearly fog hung over the river. I untied the raft and quietly drifted downstream.

Ahead of me, through the fog, I saw two deer moving across the river, a doe and a fawn. When they reached the shore, the doe leaped easily up the steep bank, then turned to wait for her baby. But the fawn was in trouble. It kept slipping down the muddy bank. The doe returned to the water to help, but the more the fawn struggled, the deeper it got stuck in the mud.

I pushed off the river bottom and drove the raft hard onto the muddy bank, startling the doe. Then I dropped into the water. I was ankle-deep in mud.

You’re okay,” I whispered to the fawn, praying that the raft would calm it. “I won’t hurt you.”

Gradually the fawn stopped struggling, as if it understood that I was there to help. I put my arms around it and pulled. It barely moved. I pulled again, then again. Slowly the fawn eased out of the mud, and finally it was free. Carefully I carried the fawn up the bank to its mother.

Then, quietly, I returned to the raft. From there I watched the doe nuzzle and clean her baby, and I knew what I had to do. I pulled the stub of a crayon from my pocket, and drew the fawn, in all its wildness, onto the old gray boards of the raft. When I had finished, I knew it was just right.

Text copyright © 2000 Jim LaMarche. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Rylant, Cynthia. Poppleton in Winter. Illustrated by Mark Teague. New York: Scholastic, 2001. (2001)From “The Sleigh Ride”

It was a very snowy day and Poppleton felt like a sleigh ride. He called his friend Cherry Sue.

“Would you like to go for a sleigh ride?” Poppleton asked.

“Sorry, Poppleton, I’m making cookies,” said Cherry Sue.

Poppleton called his friend Hudson.

“Would you like to go for a sleigh ride?” Poppleton asked.

“Sorry,” said Hudson, “I’m baking a cake.”Poppleton called his friend Fillmore.

“Would you like to go for a sleigh ride?” Poppleton asked.

“Sorry,” said Fillmore. “I’m stirring some fudge.”

Poppleton was disappointed. He couldn’t find one friend for a sleigh ride. And besides that, they were all making such good things to eat!

He sat in front of his window, feeling very sorry for himself. Suddenly the doorbell rang.

“SURPRISE!”

There stood all of Poppleton’s friends! With cookies and cake and fudge and presents! “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POPPLETON!”

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He had forgotten his own birthday! Everyone ate and laughed and played games with Poppleton.

Then, just before midnight, they all took him on a sleigh ride.

The moon was full and white. The stars twinkled. The owls hooted in the trees. Over the snow went the sleigh filled with Poppleton and all of his friends.

Poppleton didn’t even make a birthday wish. He had everything already.

From POPPLETON IN WINTER by Cynthia Rylant. Scholastic Inc./Blue Sky Press. Copyright © 2001 by Cynthia Rylant. Used by permission.

Rylant, Cynthia. The Lighthouse Family: The Storm. Illustrated by Preston McDaniels. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. (2002)

In a lonely lighthouse, far from city and town, far from the comfort of friends, lived a kindhearted cat named Pandora.

She had been living in this lighthouse all alone for four long years, and it was beginning to wear. She found herself sighing long, deep, lonely sighs. She sat on the rocks overlooking the waves far too long. Sometimes her nose got a sunburn.

And at night, when she tried to read by the lantern light, her mind wandered and she would think for hours on her childhood when she had friends and company.

Why did Pandora accept this lonely lighthouse life?

Because a lighthouse had once saved her. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division from THE LIGHTHOUSE FAMILY: THE STORM by Cynthia Rylant. Text Copyright © 2002 Cynthia Rylant.

Osborne, Mary Pope. The One-Eyed Giant (Book One of Tales from the Odyssey). New York: Disney Hyperion, 2002. (2002)From Chapter Five: “The One-Eyed Giant”

A hideous giant lumbered into the clearing. He carried nearly half a forest’s worth of wood on his back. His monstrous head jutted from his body like a shaggy mountain peak. A single eye bulged in the center of his forehead.

The monster was Polyphemus. He was the most savage of all the Cyclopes, a race of fierce one-eyed giants who lived without laws or leader. The Cyclopes were ruthless creatures who were known to capture and devour any sailors who happened near their shores.

Polyphemus threw down his pile of wood. As it crashed to the ground, Odysseus and his men fled to the darkest corners of the cave.

Unaware that the Greeks were hiding inside, Polyphemus drove his animals into the cave. Then he rolled a huge boulder over its mouth to block out the light of day and imprison his flock inside.

Twenty-four wagons could not haul that rock away, Odysseus thought desperately. How will we escape this monster?

Odysseus’ men trembled with terror as the giant made a small fire and milked his goats in the shadowy light. His milking done, he threw more wood on his fire. The flame blazed brightly, lighting up the corners of the cave where Odysseus and his men were hiding.

“What’s this? Who are you? From where do you come?” the giant boomed. He glared at the Greeks with his single eye. “Are you pirates who steal the treasure of others?”

Odysseus’ men were frozen with terror. But Odysseus hid his own fear and stepped toward the monster.

“We are not pirates,” he said, “We are Greeks blown off course by storm winds. Will you offer us the gift of hospitality like a good host? If you do, mighty Zeus, king of the gods, will be pleased. Zeus is the guardian of all strangers.”

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“Fool!” the giant growled. “Who are you to tell me to please Zeus? I am a son of Poseidon, god of the seas! I am not afraid of Zeus!”

Odysseus men cowered in fear.

Polyphemus moved closer to Odysseus. He spoke in a soft, terrible voice. “But tell me, stranger, where is your ship?

Near or far from shore?”

Odysseus knew Polyphemus was trying to trap him. “Our ship was destroyed in the storm,” he lied. “It was dashed against the rocks. With these good men I escaped, I ask you again, will you welcome us?”

From Mary Pope Osborne’s the One Eyed Giant © 2002 by Mary Pope Osborne. Reprinted by permission ofDisney∙Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group LLC, All Rights Reserved.

Silverman, Erica. Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa. Illustrated by Betsy Lewin. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. (2005)From Chapter 1: “A Story for Cocoa”

Cowgirl Kate rode her horse, Cocoa, out to the pasture.

“It’s time to herd cows,” said Cowgirl Kate.

“I am thirsty,” said Cocoa.

He stopped at the creek and took a drink.

“Are you ready now?” asked Cowgirl Kate.

“No,” said Cocoa. “Now I am hungry.”

Cowgirl Kate gave him an apple. He ate it in one bite. Then he sniffed the saddlebag.

Cowgirl Kate gave him another apple. He ate that in one bite, too. He sniffed the saddlebag again.

“You are a pig,” said Cowgirl Kate.

“No,” said Cocoa. “I am a horse.”

“A cowhorse?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said.

“But a cowhorse herds cows,” she said.

“Just now, I am too full,” he said.

Cowgirl Kate smiled. “Then I will tell you a story.”

“Once there was a cowgirl who needed a cowhorse. She went to a ranch and saw lots and lots of horses. Then she saw a horse whose coat was the color of chocolate. His tail and mane were the color of caramel. ‘Yum,’ said the cowgirl, ‘you are the colors of my favorite candy.’ The horse looked at her. He sniffed her.”

“’Are you a real cowgirl?’ he asked. ‘I am a cowgirl from the boots up,’ she said. ‘Well, I am a cowhorse from the mane down,’ he said. ‘Will you work hard every day?’ the cowgirl asked.. The horse raised his head high.‘Of course,’ he said, ‘a cowhorse always does his job.’ ‘At last,’ said the cowgirl, ‘I have found my horse.’”

“That was a good story,” said Cocoa. He raised his head high. “And now I am ready to herd cows.”Excerpted from COWGIRL KATE AND COCOA By Erica Silverman. Text copyright © 2005 by Erica Silverman. Used by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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POETRY (2-3)

Dickinson, Emily. “Autumn.” The Compete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. (1893)

The morns are meeker than they were.The nuts are getting brown;The berry’s cheek is plumper,The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,The field a scarlet gown.Lest I should be old-fashioned,I’ll put a trinket on.

Rossetti, Christina. “Who Has Seen the Wind?” Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child’s Book of Poems. Selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers et al. Illustrated by Marcia Brown et al. New York: Scholastic, 1988. (1893)

Who has seen the wind?Neither I nor you;But when the leaves hang tremblingThe wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?Neither you nor I;But when the trees bow down their headsThe wind is passing by.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Afternoon on a Hill.” The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Edited by Nancy Milford. New York: Modern Library, 2001. (1917)

I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun!I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds With quiet eyes,Watch the wind bow down the grass, And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show Up from the town,I will mark which must be mine, And then start down!

Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems. Edited by Edward Connery Lathem. New York: Henry Holt, 1979. (1923)

Field, Rachel. “Something Told the Wild Geese.” Branches Green . New York: Macmillan, 1934. (1934)

Hughes, Langston. “Grandpa’s Stories.” The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York: Knopf, 1994. (1958)

Jarrell, Randall. “A Bat Is Born.” The Bat Poet. New York: HarperCollins, 1964. (1964)

A bat is bornNaked and blind and pale.His mother makes a pocket of her tailAnd catches him. He clings to her long fur

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By his thumbs and toes and teeth.And them the mother dances through the nightDoubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting—Her baby hangs on underneath.All night, in happiness, she hunts and fliesHer sharp criesLike shining needlepoints of soundGo out into the night and, echoing back,Tell her what they have touched.She hears how far it is, how big it is,Which way it’s going:She lives by hearing.The mother eats the moths and gnats she catchesIn full flight; in full flight

The mother drinks the water of the pondShe skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.Her baby drinks the milk she makes himIn moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.Their single shadow, printed on the moonOr fluttering across the stars,Whirls on all night; at daybreakThe tired mother flaps home to her rafter.The others are all there.They hang themselves up by their toes,They wrap themselves in their brown wings.Bunched upside down, they sleep in air.Their sharp ears, their sharp teeth, their

quick sharp facesAre dull and slow and mild.All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,She folds her wings about her sleeping child.

Copyright © 1964 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY RENEWED TEXT COPYRIGHT © 1992 BY MARY JERRELL. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Giovanni, Nikki. “Knoxville, Tennessee.” Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child’s Book of Poems. Selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers et al. Illustrated by Marcia Brown et al. New York: Scholastic, 1988. (1968)

I always like summerbestyou can eat fresh cornfrom daddy’s gardenand okraand greensand cabbageand lots ofbarbecueand buttermilkat the church picnic

and listen togospel musicoutsideat the churchhomecomingand you go to the mountainswithyour grandmother

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and go barefootedand be warmall the timenot only when you go to bedand sleep

COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY Nikki Giovanni. Used by permission.

Merriam, Eve. “Weather.” Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child’s Book of Poems. Selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers et al. Illustrated by Marcia Brown et al. New York: Scholastic, 1988. (1969)

Soto, Gary. “Eating While Reading.” The 20th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury. Selected by Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Meilo So. New York: Knopf, 1999. (1995)

What is betterThan this bookAnd the churn of candyIn your mouth,Or the balloon of bubble gum,Or the crack of sunflower seeds,Or the swig of soda,Or the twist of beef jerky,Or the slow slitherOf snow cone syrupRunning down your arms?

What is better thanThis sweet danceOn the tongue,And this bookThat pulls you in?It yells, “Over here!”And you hurry alongWith a red, sticky face.

“Eating While Reading” from CANTO FAMILIAR by Gary Soto. Copyright © 1995 by Gary Soto. Used by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Read-Aloud Stories (2-3)

Kipling, Rudyard. “How the Camel Got His Hump.” Just So Stories. New York: Puffin, 2008. (1902)

Now this is the next tale, and it tells how the Camel got his big hump.

In the beginning of years, when the world was so new and all, and the Animals were just beginning to work for Man, there was a Camel, and he lived in the middle of a Howling Desert because he did not want to work; and besides, he was a Howler himself. So he ate sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles, most ‘scruciating idle; and when anybody spoke to him he said “Humph!” Just “Humph!” and no more.

Presently the Horse came to him on Monday morning, with a saddle on his back and a bit in his mouth, and said, “Camel, O Camel, come out and trot like the rest of us.”

“Humph!” said the Camel; and the Horse went away and told the Man.

Presently the Dog came to him, with a stick in his mouth, and said, “Camel, O Camel, come and fetch and carry like the rest of us.”

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“Humph !” said the Camel; and the Dog went away and told the Man.

Presently the Ox came to him, with the yoke on his neck and said, “Camel, O Camel, come and plough like the rest of us.”

“Humph!” said the Camel; and the Ox went away and told the Man.

At the end of the day the Man called the Horse and the Dog and the Ox together, and said, “Three, O Three, I’m very sorry for you (with the world so new-and-all); but that Humph-thing in the Desert can’t work, or he would have been here by now, so I am going to leave him alone, and you must work double-time to make up for it.”

That made the Three very angry (with the world so new-and-all), and they held a palaver, and an indaba, and a punchayet, and a pow-wow on the edge of the Desert; and the Camel came chewing milkweed most ’scruciating idle, and laughed at them. Then he said “Humph!” and went away again.

Presently there came along the Djinn in charge of All Deserts, rolling in a cloud of dust (Djinns always travel that way because it is Magic), and he stopped to palaver and pow-wow with the Three.

“Djinn of All Deserts,” said the Horse, “is it right for anyone to be idle, with the world so new-and-all?”

“Certainly not,” said the Djinn.

“Well,” said the Horse, “there’s a thing in the middle of your Howling Desert (and he’s a Howler himself) with a long neck and long legs, and he hasn’t done a stroke of work since Monday morning. He won’t trot.”

“Whew!” said the Djinn, whistling, “that’s my Camel, for all the gold in Arabia! What does he say about it?”

“He says ‘Humph!’” said the Dog; “and he won’t fetch and carry.”

“Does he say anything else?”

“Only ‘Humph!’; and he won’t plough,” said the Ox.

“Very good,” said the Djinn. “I’ll humph him if you will kindly wait a minute.”

Thurber, James. The Thirteen Clocks. Illustrated by Marc Simont. New York: New York Review Children’s Collection,2008. (1950)From Chapter 1

Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales. He was six feet four, and forty-six, and even colder than he thought he was. One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle, which made half of his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to maul. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes.

Wickedly scheming, he would limp and cackle through the cold corridors of the castle, planning new impossible feats for the suitors of Saralinda to perform. He did not wish to give her hand in marriage, since her hand was the only warm hand in the castle. Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten to five in the castle. Travelers and mariners would look up at the gloomy castle on the lonely hill and say, “Time lies frozen there. It’s always Then. It’s never Now.”

White, E. B. Charlotte’s Web. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. (1952)From Chapter 1: “Before Breakfast”

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

“Out to the hoghouse,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”

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“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight.

“Well,” said her mother, “one of the pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”

“Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”

Mrs. Arable put a pitcher of cream on the table. “Don’t yell, Fern!” she said. “Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway.”

Fern pushed a chair out of the way and ran outdoors. The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime. Fern’s sneakers were sopping by the time she caught up with her father.

“Please don’t kill it!” she sobbed. “It’s unfair.” Mr. Arable stopped walking.

“Fern,” he said gently, “you will have to learn to control yourself.”

“Control myself?” yelled Fern. “This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about controlling myself.”

Tears ran down her cheeks and she took hold of the ax and tried to pull it out of her father’s hand.

“Fern,” said Mr. Arable, “I know more about raising a litter of pigs than you do. A weakling makes trouble. Now run along!”

“But it’s unfair,” cried Fern. “The pig couldn’t help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?”

Mr. Arable smiled. “Certainly not,” he said, looking down at his daughter with love. “But this is different. A little girl is one thing, a little runty pig is another.”

“I see no difference,” replied Fern, still hanging on to the ax. “This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of.”

Selden, George. The Cricket in Times Square. Illustrated by Garth Williams. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1960. (1960)From Chapter Three: “Chester”

Tucker Mouse had been watching the Bellinis and listening to what they said. Next to scrounging, eaves-dropping on human beings was what he enjoyed most. That was one of the reasons he lived in the Times Square subway station. As soon as the family disappeared, he darted out across the floor and scooted up to the newsstand. At one side the boards had separated and there was a wide space he could jump through. He’d been in a few times before—just exploring. For a moment he stood under the three-legged stool, letting his eyes get used to the darkness. Then he jumped up on it.

“Psst!” he whispered. “Hey, you up there—are you awake?”

There was no answer.

“Psst! Psst! Hey!” Tucker whispered again, louder this time.

From the shelf above came a scuffling, like little feet feeling their way to the edge. “Who is that going ‘psst’?” said a voice.

“It’s me,” said Tucker. “Down here on the stool.”

A black head, with two shiny black eyes, peered down at him. “Who are you?”

“A mouse,” said Tucker. “Who are you?”

“I’m Chester Cricket, said the cricket. He had a high, musical voice. Everything he said seemed spoken in an unheard melody.

“My name’s Tucker,” said Tucker Mouse. “Can I come up?”

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“I guess so,” said Chester Cricket. “This isn’t my house anyway.”

Tucker jumped up beside the cricket and looked him all over. “A cricket,” he said admiringly. “So you’re a cricket. I never saw one before.”

I’ve seen mice before,” the cricket said. “I knew quite a few back in Connecticut.”

“Is that where you’re from?” asked Tucker.

“Yes,” said Chester. “I guess I’ll never see it again,” he added wistfully.

Babbitt, Natalie. The Search for Delicious. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. (1969)From the Prologue

There was a time once when the earth was still very young, a time some call the oldest days. This was long before there were any people about to dig parts of it up and cut parts of it off. People came along much later, building their towns and castles (which nearly always fell down after a while) and plaguing each other with quarrels and supper parties. The creatures who lived on earth in that early time stayed each in his own place and kept it beautiful. There were dwarfs in the mountains, woldwellers in the forests, mermaids in the lakes, and, of course, winds in the air.

There was one particular spot on the earth where a ring of mountains enclosed a very dry and dusty place. There were winds and dwarfs there, but no mermaids because there weren’t any lakes, and there were no woldwellers either because forests couldn’t grow in so dry a place.

Then a remarkable thing happened. Up in the mountains one day a dwarf was poking about with a sharp tool, looking for a good spot to begin mining. He poked and poked until he had made a very deep hole in the earth. Then he poked again and clear spring water came spurting up in the hole. He hurried in great excitement to tell the other dwarfs and they all came running to see the water. They were so pleased that they built over it a fine house of heavy stones and they made a special door out of a flat rock and balanced it in its place very carefully on carved hinges. Then one of them made a whistle out of a small stone which blew a certain very high note tuned to just the right warble so that when you blew it, the door of the rock house would open, and when you blew it again, the door would shut. They took turns being in charge of the whistle and they worked hard to keep the spring clean and beautiful.

Curtis, Christopher Paul. Bud, Not Buddy. New York: Random House, 1999. (1999)(Also listed as a narrative for grades 4–5)From Chapter 1

Here we go again. We were all standing in line waiting for breakfast when one of the caseworkers came in and taptap-taped down the line. Uh-oh, this meant bad news, either they’d found a foster home for somebody or somebody was about to get paddled. All the kids watched the woman as she moved along the line, her high-heeled shoes sounding like little fire-crackers going off on the wooden floor.

Shoot! She stopped at me and said, “Are you Buddy Caldwell?”

I said, “It’s Bud, not Buddy, ma’am.”

She put her hand on my shoulder and took me out of the line. Then she pulled Jerry, one of the littler boys, over. “Aren’t you Jerry Clark?” He nodded.

“Boys, good news! Now that the school year has ended, you both have been accepted in new temporary-care homes starting this afternoon!”

Jerry asked the same thing I was thinking, “Together?”

She said, “Why no, Jerry, you’ll be in a family with three little girls…”

Jerry looked like he’d just found out they were going to dip him in a pot of boiling milk.

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“…and Bud…” She looked at some papers she was holding. “Oh, yes, the Amoses, you’ll be with Mr. and Mrs. Amos and their son, who’s twelve years old, that makes him just two years older than you, doesn’t it, Bud?”

Yes, ma’am.”

She said, “I’m sure you’ll both be very happy.”

Me and Jerry looked at each other.

The woman said, “Now, now, boys, no need to look so glum, I know you don’t understand what it means, but there’s a depression going on all over this country. People can’t find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody. We’ve been lucky enough to find two wonderful families who’ve opened their doors for you. I think it’s best that we show our new foster families that we’re very…”

She dragged out the word very, waiting for us to finish her sentence for her.

Jerry said, “Cheerful, helpful and grateful.” I moved my lips and mumbled.

She smiled and said, “Unfortunately, you won’t have time for breakfast. I’ll have a couple of pieces of fruit put in a bag. In the meantime go to the sleep room and strip your beds and gather all of your things.”

Here we go again. I felt like I was walking in my sleep as I followed Jerry back to the room where all the boys’ beds were jim-jammed together. This was the third foster home I was going to and I’m used to packing up and leaving, but it still surprises me that there are always a few seconds, right after they tell you you’ve got to go, when my nose gets all runny and my throat gets all choky and my eyes get all sting-y. But the tears coming out doesn’t happen to me anymore, I don’t know when it first happened, but is seems like my eyes don’t cry anymore.

Say, Allen. The Sign Painter. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. (2000)

“Are you lost, son?” the man asked.

“Yes . . . I mean no. I need a job,” the young man stammered looking not much more than a boy.

“Tell me what you can do.”

“I can paint.”

“Ah, an artist. Are you good at faces?”

“I think so.”

“Can you paint them big?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’m interested.” The man put down the brush, and said, “Come with me.”

Excerpt from THE SIGN PAINTER by Allen Say. Copyright © 2000 by Allen Say. Used by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Read-Aloud Poetry (2-3)

Lear, Edward. “The Jumblies.” Sing a Song of Popcorn: Every Child’s Book of Poems. Selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers et al. Illustrated by Marcia Brown et al. New York: Scholastic, 1988. (1871)

They went to sea in a sieve, they did;In a sieve they went to sea:In spite of all their friends could say,On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,In a sieve they went to sea.And when the sieve turned round and round,And every one cried, “You’ll all be drowned!”They called aloud, “Our sieve ain’t big;But we don’t care a button, we don’t care a fig:In a sieve we’ll go to sea!”

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

They sailed away in a sieve, they did,In a sieve they sailed so fast,With only a beautiful pea-green veilTied with a ribbon, by way of a sail,To a small tobacco-pipe mast.And every one said who saw them go,“Oh! won’t they be soon upset, you know?For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long;And, happen what may, it’s extremely wrongIn a sieve to sail so fast.”

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

The water it soon came in, it did;The water it soon came in:So, to keep them dry, they wrapped their feetIn a pinky paper all folded neat;And they fastened it down with a pin.And they passed the night in a crockery-jar;And each of them said, “How wise we are!Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,While round in our sieve we spin.”

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

And all night long they sailed away;And when the sun went down,They whistled and warbled a moony songTo the echoing sound of a coppery gong,In the shade of the mountains brown.”

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O Timballoo! How happy we areWhen we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar!And all night long, in the moonlight pale,We sail away with a pea-green sailIn the shade of the mountains brown

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,—To a land all covered with trees:And they bought an owl, and a useful cart,And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart,And a hive of silvery bees;And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws,And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws,And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree,And no end of Stilton cheese.

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

And in twenty years they all came back,—In twenty years or more;And every one said, “How tall they’ve grown!For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,And the hills of the Chankly Bore.“And they drank their health, and gave them a feastOf dumplings made of beautiful yeast;And every one said, “If we only live,We, too, will go to sea in a sieve,To the hills of the Chankly Bore.

Far and few, far and few,Are the lands where the Jumblies live:Their heads are green, and their hands are blueAnd they went to sea in a sieve.

Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Illustrated by Kate Greenaway. New York: Knopf, 1993. (1888)

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,By famous Hanover city;

The river Weser, deep and wide,Washes its wall on the southern side;A pleasanter spot you never spied;

But, when begins my ditty,Almost five hundred years ago,To see the townsfolk suffer so

From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,And ate the cheeses out of the vats.And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,

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Split open the kegs of salted sprats,Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,And even spoiled the women’s chats,

By drowning their speakingWith shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a bodyTo the Town Hall came flocking:

“Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;And as for our Corporation—shocking

To think we buy gowns lined with ermineFor dolts that can’t or won’t determineWhat’s best to rid us of our vermin!You hope, because you’re old and obese,To find in the furry civic robe ease?Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a rackingTo find the remedy we’re lacking,Or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!”At this the Mayor and CorporationQuaked with a mighty consternation.

Johnson, Georgia Douglas. “Your World.” Words with Wings: A Treasury of African-American Poetry and Art.Selected by Belinda Rochelle. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. (1918)

Your world is as big as you make it.I know, for I used to abideIn the narrowest nest in a corner,My wings pressing close to my side.

But I sighted the distant horizonWhere the skyline encircled the seaAnd I throbbed with a burning desireTo travel this immensity.

I battered the cordons around meAnd cradled my wings on the breeze,Then soared to the uttermost reachesWith rapture, with power, with ease!

Eliot, T. S. “The Song of the Jellicles.” Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Illustrated by Edward Gorey. Orlando: Harcourt, 1982. (1939)

Fleischman, Paul. “Fireflies.” Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. Illustrated by Eric Beddows. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. (1988)Light Light

is the ink we useNight Nightis our parchment

We’refireflies

fireflies flickeringflitting

flashingfirefliesglimmering fireflies

gleamingglowingInsect calligraphers Insect calligraphers

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practicing penmanshipcopying sentences

Six-legged scribblers Six-legged scribblersof vanishing messages,

fleeting graffitiFine artists in flight Fine artists in flightadding dabs of light

bright brush strokesSigning the June nights Signing the June nightsas if they were paintings as if they were paintings

We’reflickering firefliesfireflies flickeringfireflies. fireflies.

TEXT COPYRIGHT © 1988 BY PAUL FLEISCHMAN. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Informational Texts (2-3)

Aliki. A Medieval Feast. New York: HarperCollins, 1986. (1983)

It was announced from the palace that the King would soon make a long journey.

On the way to his destination, the King and his party would spend a few nights at Camdenton Manor. The lord of the manor knew what this meant. The king traveled with his Queen, his knights, squires, and other members of his court. There could be a hundred mouths to feed!

Preparations for the visit began at once. The lord and lady of the manor had their serfs to help them. The serfs lived in huts provided for them on the lord’s estate, each with its own plot of land. In return, they were bound to serve the lord. They farmed his land, managed his manor house, and if there was a war, they had to go to battle with the lord and the King.

But now they prepared.

The manor had its own church, which was attended by everyone on the estate.

The manor house had to be cleaned, the rooms readied, tents set up for the horsemen, fields fenced for the horses. And above all, provisions had to be gathered for the great feast.

The Royal Suite was redecorated.

Silk was spun, new fabric was woven.

The Royal Crest was embroidered on linen and painted on the King’s chair.

The lord and his party went hunting and hawking for fresh meat.

Hunting was a sport for the rich only. The wild animals that lived on the lord’s estate belonged to him. Anyone caught poaching—hunting illegally—was severely punished.

Falcons and hawks were prized pets. They were trained to attack birds for their masters to capture.

They trapped rabbits and birds of all kinds, and fished for salmon and eels and trout.

Serfs hid in bushes and caught birds in traps. They set ferrets in burrows to chase out rabbits.

There were fruits and vegetables growing in the garden, herbs and flowers for sauces and salads, and bees made honey for sweetening.31

COPYRIGHT © 1983 BY ALIKI BRANDENBERG. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Gibbons, Gail. From Seed to Plant. New York: Holiday House, 1993. (1991)From “A ‘From Seed to Plant’ Project”

How to raise bean plants

1. Find a clean glass jar. Take a piece of black construction paper and roll it up.

2. Slide the paper into the jar. Fill the jar with water.

3. Wedge the bean seeds between the black paper and the glass. Put the jar in a warm place

4. In a few days the seeds will begin to sprout. Watch the roots grow down. The shoots will grow up.

5. Put dirt into a big clay pot.

6. Carefully remove the small plants from the glass jar. Place them in the soil, covering them up to the base of their shoots.

7. Water them…and watched them grow.

Copyright © 1991 by Gail Gibbons. Used by permission.

Milton, Joyce. Bats: Creatures of the Night. Illustrated by Joyce Moffatt. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1993. (1993)

No one has lived on this farm for years.The barn looks empty.But it isn’t!Strange creatures are sleeping in the loft.As the sun goes down, they take to the air.

From BATS: CREATURES OF THE NIGHT by Joyce Milton. Text © 1993 by Joyce Milton. Illustrations © 1993 by Judith Moffatt. Used by permission of Grosset & Dunlap, A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.

Beeler, Selby. Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions Around the World. Illustrated by G. Brian Karas. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. (1998)

Has this ever happened to you?You find a loose tooth in your mouth.Yikes! You can wiggle it with your finger.You can push it back and forth with your tongue.Then one day it falls out.There you are with your old baby tooth in your hand and a big hole in your mouth.It happens to everyone, everywhere, all over the world.“Look! Look! My tooth fell out! My tooth fell out!”But what happens next?What in the world do you do with your tooth?

North America

United StatesI put my tooth under my pillow. While I’m sound asleep, the Tooth Fairy will come into my room, take my tooth, and leave some money in its place.

MexicoWhen I go to sleep, I leave my tooth in a box on the bedside table. I hope El Raton, the magic mouse, will take my tooth and bring me some money. He leaves more money for a front tooth.

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YupikMy mother wraps my tooth in a food, like meat or bread. Then I feed it to a female dog and say, “Replace this tooth with a better one.”

Yellowknife DeneMy mother or grandmother takes my tooth and puts it in a tree and then my family dances around it. This makes certain that my new tooth will grow in as straight as a tree.

NavajoMy mother saves my tooth until my mouth stops hurting. Then we take my tooth to the southeast, away from our house. We bury the tooth on the east side of a healthy young sagebrush, rabbit bush, or pinyon tree because we believe that east is the direction associated with childhood.

Excerpted from THROW YOUR TOOTH ON THE ROOF: Tooth Traditions From Around the World. Text Copyright © 1998 by Selby B. Beeler. Used by Permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Leonard, Heather. Art Around the World. New York: Rigby, 1998. (1998)

Ruffin, Frances E. Martin Luther King and the March on Washington. Illustrated by Stephen Marchesi. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2000. (2000)

August 28, 1963

It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C.More than 250,000 people are pouring into the city.They have come by plane, by train, by car, and by bus.

From MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON: ALL ABOARD READING by Frances E. Ruffin,illustrated by Stephen Marchesi. Text © 2001 by Frances E. Ruffin. Illustrations © 2001 by Stephen Marchesi. Used by permission of Grosset & Dunlap, A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.

St. George, Judith. So You Want to Be President? Illustrated by David Small. New York: Philomel, 2000. (2000)

Every single President has taken this oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Only thirty-five words! But it’s a big order if you’re President of this country. Abraham Lincoln was tops at filling that order. “I know very well that many others might in this matter or as in others, do better than I can,” he said. “But…I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”

That’s the bottom line. Tall, short, fat, thin, talkative, quiet, vain, humble, lawyer, teacher, or soldier—this is what most of our Presidents have tried to do, each in his own way. Some succeeded. Some failed. If you want to be President—a good President—pattern yourself after the best. Our best have asked more of themselves than they thought they could give. They have had the courage, spirit, and will to do what they knew was right. Most of all, their first priority has always been the people and the country they served.

From SO YOU WANT TO BE PRESIDENT? By Judith St. George, illustrated by David Small. Text © 2000 by Judith St. George. Illustrations © 2000 by David Small. Used by permission of Philomel Books, A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc, all rights reserved.

Einspruch, Andrew. Crittercam. National Geographic Windows on Literacy Series. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2004. (2004)

Kudlinski, Kathleen V. Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs. Illustrated by S. D. Schindler. New York: Dutton, 2005. (2005)

Long, long ago, before people knew anything about dinosaurs, giant bones were found in China. Wise men who saw the bones tried to guess what sort of enormous animal they could have come from.

After they studied the fossil bones, the ancient Chinese decided that they came from dragons. They thought these dragons must have been magic dragons to be so large. And they believed that dragons could still be alive.

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Boy, were they wrong!

No one knows exactly what dinosaurs looked like. All that is left of them are fossil bones and a few other clues. Now that we think that many of our own past guesses about dinosaurs were just as wrong as those of ancient China.

Some of our mistakes were little ones. When the first fossil bones of Iguanodon were found, one was shaped like a rhino’s horn. Scientists guessed that the strange horn fit like a spike on Iguanodon’s nose

Boy, were we wrong about Iguanodon!

When a full set of fossil bones was found later, there were two pointed bones, they were part of Iguanodon’s hands, not its nose!

Other new clues show us that we may have been wrong about every kind of dinosaur.

Some of our first drawings of dinosaurs showed them with their elbows and knees pointing out to the side, like a lizard’s. With legs like that, big dinosaurs could only waddle clumsily on all fours or float underwater.

Now we know that their legs were straight under them, like a horse’s. Dinosaurs were not clumsy. The sizes and shapes of their leg bones see to show that some were as fast and graceful as deer.From BOY, WERE WE WRONG ABOUT DINOSAURS by Kathleen Kudlinski, illustrated by S.D. Schindler. Text copyright © 2005 by Kathleen V. Kudlinski. Illustrations © 2005 by S.D. Schindler. Used by permission of Dutton Children’s Books, A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, A Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved.

Davies, Nicola. Bat Loves the Night. Illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick, 2001. (2001)

Floca, Brian. Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. New York: Atheneum, 2009. (2009)

High above there is the Moon, cold and quiet, no air, no life, but glowing in the sky.

Here below there are three men who close themselves in special clothes, who—click—lock hands in heavy gloves, who—click—lock heads in large round helmets.

It is summer here in Florida, hot, and near the sea. But now these men are dressed for colder, stranger places. They walk with stiff and awkward steps in suits not made for Earth.

They have studied and practiced and trained, and said good-bye to family and friends. If all goes well, they will be gone for one week, gone where no one has been.

Their two small spaceships are Columbia and Eagle. They sit atop the rocket that will raise them into space, a monster of a machine: It stands thirty stories, it weighs six million pounds, a tower full of fuel and fire and valves and pipes and engines, too big to believe, but built to fly—the mighty, massive Saturn V.

The astronauts squeeze in to Columbia’s sideways seats, lying on their backs, facing toward the sky—Neil Armstrongon the left, Michael Collins in the right, Buzz Aldrin in the middle.

Click and they fasten straps.

Click and the hatch is sealed.

There they wait, while the Saturn hums beneath them.

Near the rocket, in Launch Control, and far away in Houston, in Mission Control, there are numbers, screens, and charts, ways of watching and checking every piece of the rocket and ships, the fuel, the valves, the pipes, the engines, the beats of the astronauts’ hearts.

As the countdown closes, each man watching is asked the question: GO/NO GO?

And each man answers back: “GO.” “GO.” “GO.”

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Apollo 11 is GO for launch.

Reprinted with the permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division from MOONSHOT: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca. Copyright © 2009 by Brian Floca.

Thomson, Sarah L. Where Do Polar Bears Live? Illustrated by Jason Chin. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. (2010)

This island is covered with snow. No trees grow. Nothing has green leaves. The land is white as far as you can see.

Then something small and round and black pokes up out of the snow.

A black nose sniffs the air. Then a smooth white head appears. A mother polar bear heaves herself out of her den.

A cub scrambles after her.

When the cub was born four months ago, he was no bigger than a guinea pig. Blind and helpless, he snuggled in his mother’s fur. He drank her milk and grew, safe from the long Arctic winter.

Outside the den, on some days, it was fifty degrees below zero. From October to February, the sun never rose.

Now it is spring—even though snow still covers the land. The cub is about the size of a cocker spaniel. He’s ready to leave the den. For the first time, he sees bright sunlight and feels the wind ruffle his fur

The cub tumbles and slides down icy hills. His play makes him strong and teaches him to walk and run in snow.

Like his mother, he cub is built to survive in the Arctic. His white fur will grow to be six inches thick—longer than your hand. The skin beneath the cub’s fur is black. It soaks up the heat of the sun. Under the skin is a layer of fat. Like a snug blanket, this blubber keeps in the heat of the bear’s body.

Polar bears get too hot more easily than they get too cold. They stretch out on the ice to cool off.

Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Read-Aloud Informational Texts (2-3)

Freedman, Russell. Lincoln: A Photobiography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. (1987)From Chapter One: “The Mysterious Mr. Lincoln”

Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the sort of man who could lose himself in a crowd. After all, he stood six feet four inches tall. And to top it off, he wore a high silk hat.

His height was mostly in his long bony legs. When he sat in a chair, he seemed no taller than anyone else. I was only when he stood up that he towered over other men.

At first glance, most people thought he was homely. Lincoln thought so too, once referring to his “poor, lean, lank face.” As a young man he was sensitive about his gawky looks, but in time, he learned to laugh at himself. When a rival called him “two-faced” during a political debate, Lincoln replied: “I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”

According to those who knew him, Lincoln was a man of many faces. In repose, he often seemed sad and gloomy. But when he began to speak, his expression changed. “The dull, listless features dropped like a mask,” said a Chicago newspaperman. “The eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation, so that a stranger would have said, ‘Why, this man, so angular and solemn a moment ago, is really handsome.’”

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Lincoln was the most photographed man of his time, but his friends insisted that no photo ever did him justice. It’s no wonder. Back then cameras required long exposures. The person being photographed had to “freeze” as the seconds ticked by. If he blinked an eye, the picture would be blurred. That’s why Lincoln looks so stiff and formal in his photos. We never see him laughing or joking.

Coles, Robert. The Story of Ruby Bridges. Illustrated by George Ford. New York: Scholastic, 1995. (1995)

Ruby Bridges was born in a small cabin near Tylertown, Mississippi.

“We were very poor, very, very poor,” Ruby said. “My daddy worked picking crops. We just barely got by. There were times when we didn’t have much to eat. The people who owned the land were bringing in machines to pick the crops, so my daddy lost his job, and that’s when we had to move.

“I remember us leaving. I was four, I think.”

In 1957, the family moved to New Orleans. Ruby’s father became a janitor. Her mother took care of the children during the day. After they were tucked in bed, Ruby’s mother went to work scrubbing floors in a bank.

Every Sunday, the family went to church.

“We wanted our children to be near God’s spirit,” Ruby’s mother said. “We wanted them to start feeling close to Him from the start.”

At that time, black children and white children went to separate schools in New Orleans. The black children were not able to receive the same education as the white children. It wasn’t fair. And it was against the nation’s law.

In 1960, a judge ordered four black girls to go to two white elementary schools. Three of the girls were sent to McDonogh 19. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges was sent to first grade in the William Frantz Elementary School.

Ruby’s parents were proud that their daughter had been chosen to take part in an important event in American history. They went to church.

“We sat there and prayed to God,” Ruby’s mother said, “that we’d all be strong and we’d have courage and we’d get through any trouble; and Ruby would be a good girl and she’d hold her head up high and be a credit to her own people and a credit to all the American people. We prayed long and we prayed hard.”

On Ruby’s first day, a large crowd of angry white people gathered outside the Frantz Elementary School. The people carried signs that said they didn’t want black children in a white school. People called Ruby names; some wanted to hurt her. The city and state police did not help Ruby.

The President of the United States ordered federal marshals to walk with Ruby into the school building. The marshals carried guns.

Every day, for weeks that turned into months, Ruby experienced that kind of school day.

She walked to the Frantz School surrounded by marshals. Wearing a clean dress and a bow in her hair and carrying her lunch pail, Ruby walked slowly for the first few blocks. As Ruby approached the school, she saw a crowd of people marching up and down the street. Men and women and children shouted at her. They pushed toward her. The marshals kept them from Ruby by threatening to arrest them.

Ruby would hurry through the crowd and not say a word.

From THE STORY OF RUBY BRIDGES by Robert Coles. Copyright © 1995 by Robert Coles. Used by permission of Scholastic Inc.

Wick, Walter. A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder. New York: Scholastic, 1997. (1997)

From “Soap Bubbles”There are few objects you can make that have both the dazzling beauty and delicate precision of a soap bubble. Shown here at actual size, this bubble is a nearly perfect sphere. Its shimmering liquid skin is five hundred times thinner than a human hair.

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Bubbles made of plain water break almost as quickly as they form. That’s because surface tension is so strong the bubbles collapse. Adding soap to water weakens water’s surface tension. This allows a film of soapy water to stretch and stretch without breaking.

When you blow a bubble, it looks somewhat like a drop of water emerging from a faucet. And just like the surface of a drop of water, the bubble’s surface shrinks to form a sphere. Spheres and circles are mathematical shapes. Because they can form spontaneously, they are also shapes of nature.

From A DROP OF WATER: A BOOK OF SCIENCE AND WONDER by Walter Wick. Scholastic Inc./Scholastic Press. Copyright © 1997 by Walter Wick. Used by permission.

Smith, David J. If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People. Illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong. Toronto: Kids Can Press, 2002. (2002)From “Welcome to the Global Village”

Earth is a crowded place and it is getting more crowded all the time. As for January 1, 2002 the world’s population was 6 billion, 200 million—that’s 6,200,000,000. Twenty-three countries have more than fifty million (50,000,000) people. Ten countries each have more than one hundred million (100,000,000) people. China has nearly one billion, three hundred million people (1,3000,000,000).

Numbers like this are hard to understand, but what if we imagined the whole population of the world as a village of just 100 people? In this imaginary village, each person would represent about sixty-two million (62,000,000) people from the real world.

One hundred people would fit nicely into a small village. By learning about the villagers—who they are and how they live—perhaps we can find out more about our neighbors in the real world and the problems our planet may face in the future.

Ready to enter the global village? Go down into the valley and walk through the gates. Dawn is chasing away the night shadows. The smell of wood smoke hangs in the air. A baby awakes and cries.

Come and meet the people of the global village.

Material from If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People written by David J. Smith is used by permission of Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto. Text © 2002 David J. Smith.

Aliki. Ah, Music! New York: Harper Collins, 2005. (2003)

What is music?Music is sound.If you hum a tune, play an instrument, or clap out a rhythm, you are making music. You are listening to it, too.

[…]

Music through the Ages

Music grew from one century to the next. In the early and middle ages, new forms of music developed. Christianity inspired church music. Music became polyphonic—played and sung in two or more melodic parts. Notations were invented. Music was no longer a one-time performance. Now it would be written and preserved for other musicians and generations.

Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Mark, Jan. The Museum Book: A Guide to Strange and Wonderful Collections. Illustrated by Richard Holland. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick, 2007. (2007)From Chapter One

Suppose you went into a museum and you didn’t know what it was. Imagine: it’s raining, there’s a large building nearby with an open door, and you don’t have to pay to go in. It looks like an ancient Greek temple. Temples are places of worship, so you’d better go in quietly.

But inside it doesn’t seem much like any temple or mosque or church you have ever been in. That is, it looks like all of them, but the furniture is out of place. Perhaps it’s a hotel; it has fifty rooms, but there is only one bed, although it is a very splendid bed.

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Apparently Queen Elizabeth I slept in it. Or perhaps there are fifty beds, but they are all in one room and you can’t sleep in any of them. There are red velvet ropes to keep you out.

Farther down the corridor you notice a steam locomotive. It’s a train station! But there is no track except for a few yards that the engine is resting on, and already you have seen something else. Across the hall is a totem pole that goes right up to the roof, standing next to a Viking ship. Beyond it is a room full of glass cases displaying rocks, more kinds of rocks than you ever knew existed, from diamonds to meteorites. From where you are standing, you can see into the next room, where the glass cases are full of stuffed fish; and the next, which is lined with shelves of Roman pottery; and the next, which is crowded with birds; and after that, lions and giraffes and pandas and whales.

It must be a zoo.

[…]

Just then you see someone walking toward you who isn’t dead—you hope. He is wearing a uniform with a badge on it that reads Guide.

“Enjoying yourself?” he says.

You say, “Where did you get all this stuff?”

“All?” he says. “These are just the things we show to the public. Down in the basement there’s a hundred thousand times more. Do you know,” he murmurs, “we’ve got twenty-seven two-headed sheep?”

“But why?” you ask. “Why do you have any two-headed sheep.

“Because people give them to us,” he says. “And so that you can look at them. Where else would you see one? Where else would you be able to see the mummy case of King Tutankhamun, the first plane to fly the Atlantic, the first train engine, the last dodo, a diplodocus, the astrolabe of Ahmad of Isfahan (an example of the oldest scientific instrument in the world), chicken-skin gloves, the lantern carried by Guy Fawkes when he went to blow up the British Parliament buildings, a murderer’s trigger finger—?”

“But where am I?” you say. “What is this place?”

And he says, “It’s a museum.”

THE MUSEUM BOOK. Text Copyright © 2007 Jan Mark. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

D’Aluisio, Faith. What the World Eats. Photographed by Peter Menzel. New York: Random House, 2008. (2008)

Arnosky, Jim. Wild Tracks! A Guide to Nature’s Footprints. New York: Sterling, 2008. (2008)

“Feline Tracks”

Of all the larger predators, wildcats are the most likely to use the same trails again and again. In deep snow, their habitual routes become gully trails in which the feline tracks going to and coming from their hunting grounds are preserved, down out of the wind, away from blowing snow.

A cat’s sharp retractable claws do not show in its track unless the cat has lunged to catch its prey or scratched the ground to cover its droppings. Only cats thoroughly cover their droppings.

Bobcat, lion, and jaguar paws all have three-lobed heels. The lynx, the ocelot, and the jaguarondi have single lobed-heels.

The wildcats we have in North America are, from the smallest to the largest: ocelot, jaguarondi, bobcat, lynx, American lion, and jaguar.

From Wild Tracks! A Guide to Nature’s Footprints © 2008 by Jim Arnosky. Used with permission from Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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Deedy, Carmen Agra. 14 Cows for America. In collaboration with Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah. Illustrated by Thomas Gonzalez. Atlanta: Peachtree, 2009. (2009)

The remote village waits for a story to be told. News travels slowly to this corner of Kenya. As Kimeli nears his village, he watches a herd of bull giraffes cross the open grassland. He smiles. He has been away a long time.

A girl sitting under a guava tree sees him first and cries out to the others. The children run to him with the speed and grace of cheetahs. He greets them with a gentle touch on his head, a warrior’s blessing.

The rest of the tribe soon surrounds Kimeli. These are his people. These are the Maasai.

Once they were feared warriors. Now they live peaceably as nomadic cattle herders. They treat their cows as kindly as they do their children. They sign to them. They give them names. They shelter the young ones in their homes. Without the herd, the tribe might starve. To the Maasai, the cow is life.

“Súpa. Hello,” Kimeli hears again and again. Everyone wants to greet him. His eyes find his mother across the enkáng, the ring of huts with their roofs of sun-baked dung. She spreads her arms and calls to him, “Aakúa. Welcome, my son.” Kimeli sighs. He is home.

This is sweeter and sadder because he cannot stay. He must return to the faraway country where he is learning to be a doctor. He thinks of New York then. He remembers September.

A child asks if he has brought any stories. Kimeli nods. He has brought with him one story. It has burned a hole in his heart.

But first he must speak with the elders.

Later, in a tradition as old as the Maasai, the rest of the tribe gathers under an acacia tree to hear the story. There is a terrible stillness in the air as the tale unfolds. With growing disbelief, men, women, and children listen. Buildings so tall they can touch the sky? Fires so hot they can melt iron? Smoke and dust so thick they can block out the sun?

The story ends. More than three thousand souls are lost. A great silence falls over the Maasai. Kimeli waits. He knows his people. They are fierce when provoked, but easily moved to kindness when they hear of suffering or injustice.

At last, an elder speaks. He is shaken, but above all, he is sad. “What can we do for these poor people?” Nearby, a cow lows. Heads turn toward the herd. “To the Maasai,” Kimeli says softly, “the cow is life.”

Turning to the elders, Kimeli offers his only cow, Enkarus. He asks for their blessing. They give it gladly. But they want to offer something more.

The tribe sends word to the United States Embassy in Nairobi. In response, the embassy sends a diplomat. His jeep jounces along the dusty, rugged roads. He is hot and tired. He thinks he is going to meet with Maasai elders. He cannot be more wrong. As the jeep nears the edge of the village the man sits up. Clearly, this is no ordinary diplomatic visit. This is…

…a ceremony. Hundreds of Maasai greet the American in full tribal splendor. At the sight of the brilliant blood-red tunics and spectacular beaded collars, he can only marvel.

It is a day of sacred ritual. Young warriors dance, leaping into the air like fish from a stream. Women sing mournful songs. Children fill their bellies with milk. Speeches are exchanged. And now it is time.

Kimeli and his people gather on a sacred knoll, far from the village. The only sound is the gentle chiming of cowbells. The elders chant a blessing in Maa as the Maasai people of Kenya present…

…fourteen cows for America.

Because there is no nation so powerful it cannot be wounded, nor a people so small they cannot offer mighty comfort.

Copyright © 2009 by Carmen Agra Deedy. Used by permission.

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Exemplars of Sample Performance Tasks The text exemplars are supplemented by brief performance tasks that further clarify the meaning of the Standards. These sample tasks illustrate specifically the application of the Standards to texts of sufficient complexity, quality, and range. Relevant Reading standards are noted in brackets following each task, and the words in italics in the task reflect the wording of the Reading standard itself. (Individual grade-specific Reading standards are identified by their strand, grade, and number, so that RI.3.5, for example, stands for Reading, Informational Text, grade 3, standard 5.)

Sample Performance Tasks for Stories and Poetry Students ask and answer questions regarding the plot of Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall,

explicitly referring to the book to form the basis for their answers. [RL.3.1]

Students explain how Mark Teague’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed in Cynthia Rylant’s Poppleton in Winter to create the mood and emphasize aspects of characters and setting in the story. [RL.3.7]

Students read fables and folktales from diverse cultures that represent various origin tales, such as RudyardKipling’s “How the Camel Got His Hump” and Natalie Babbitt’s The Search for Delicious, and paraphrase their central message, lesson, or moral. [RL.2.2]

Students describe the overall story structure of The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, describing how the interactions of the characters of the Duke and Princess Saralinda introduce the beginning of the story and how the suspenseful plot comes to an end. [RL.2.5]

When discussing E. B. White’s book Charlotte’s Web, students distinguish their own point of view regarding Wilbur the Pig from that of Fern Arable as well as from that of the narrator. [RL.3.6]

Students describe how the character of Bud in Christopher Paul Curtis’ story Bud, Not Buddy responds to a major event in his life of being placed in a foster home. [RL.2.3]

Students read Paul Fleischman’s poem “Fireflies,” determining the meaning of words and phrases in the poem, particularly focusing on identifying his use of nonliteral language (e.g., “light is the ink we use”) and talking about how it suggests meaning. [RL.3.4]

Sample Performance Tasks for Informational Texts Students read Aliki’s description of A Medieval Feast and demonstrate their understanding of all that goes

into such an event by asking questions pertaining to who, what, where, when, why, and how such a meal happens and by answering using key details. [RI.2.1]

Students describe the reasons behind Joyce Milton’s statement that bats are nocturnal in her Bats: Creatures of the Night and how she supports the points she is making in the text. [RI.2.8]

Students read Selby Beeler’s Throw Your Tooth on the Roof: Tooth Traditions Around the World and identify what Beeler wants to answer as well as explain the main purpose of the text. [RI.2.6]

Students determine the meanings of words and phrases encountered in Sarah L. Thomson’s Where Do Polar Bears Live?, such as cub, den, , and the Arctic. [RI.2.4]

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Students explain how the main idea that Lincoln had “many faces” in Russell Freedman’s Lincoln: A Photobiography is supported by key details in the text. [RI.3.2]

Students read Robert Coles’s retelling of a series of historical events in The Story of Ruby Bridges. Using their knowledge of how cause and effect gives order to events, they use specific language to describe the sequence of events that leads to Ruby desegregating her school. [RI.3.3]

Students explain how the specific image of a soap bubble and other accompanying illustrations in Walter Wick’s A Drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder contribute to and clarify their understanding of bubbles and water. [RI.2.7]

Students use text features, such as the table of contents and headers, found in Aliki’s text Ah, Music! to identify relevant sections and locate information relevant to a given topic (e.g., rhythm, instruments, harmony) quickly and efficiently. [RI.3.5]

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Appendix C

Writing

Definitions of the Standards’ Three Text Types

ArgumentArguments are used for many purposes—to change the reader’s point of view, to bring about some action on the reader’s part, or to ask the reader to accept the writer’s explanation or evaluation of a concept, issue, or problem. An argument is a reasoned, logical way of demonstrating that the writer’s position, belief, or conclusion is valid. In English language arts, students make claims about the worth or meaning of a literary work or works. They defend their interpretations or judgments with evidence from the text(s) they are writing about. In history/social studies, students analyze evidence from multiple primary and secondary sources to advance a claim that is best supported by the evidence, and they argue for a historically or empirically situated interpretation. In science, students make claims in the form of statements or conclusions that answer questions or address problems. Using data in a scientifically acceptableform, students marshal evidence and draw on their understanding of scientific concepts to argue in support of their claims. Although young children are not able to produce fully developed logical arguments, they develop a variety of methods to extend and elaborate their work by providing examples, offering reasons for their assertions, and explaining cause and effect. These kinds of expository structures are steps on the road to argument. In grades K–5, the term “opinion” is used to refer to this developing form of argument.

Informational/Explanatory WritingInformational/explanatory writing conveys information accurately. This kind of writing serves one or more closely related purposes: to increase readers’ knowledge of a subject, to help readers better understand a procedure or process, or to provide readers with an enhanced comprehension of a concept. Informational/explanatory writing addresses matters such as types (What are the different types of poetry?) and components (What are the parts of a motor?); size, function, or behavior (How big is the United States? What is an X-ray used for? How do penguins find food?); how things work (How does the legislative branch of government function?); and why things happen (Why do some authors blend genres?). To produce this kind of writing, students draw from what they already know and from primary and secondary sources. With practice, students become better able to develop a controlling idea and a coherent focuson a topic and more skilled at selecting and incorporating relevant examples, facts, and details into their writing. They are also able to use a variety of techniques to convey information, such as naming, defining, describing, or differentiating different types or parts; comparing or contrasting ideas or concepts; and citing an anecdote or a scenario to illustrate a point. Informational/explanatory writing includes a wide array of genres, including academic genres such as literary analyses, scientific and historical reports, summaries, and precis writing as well as forms of workplace and functional writing such as instructions, manuals, memos, reports, applications, and resumes. As students advance through the grades, they expand their repertoire of informational/explanatory genres and use them effectively in a variety of disciplines and domains.

Although information is provided in both arguments and explanations, the two types of writing have different aims. Arguments seek to make people believe that something is true or to persuade people to change their beliefs or behavior. Explanations, on the other hand, start with the assumption of truthfulness and answer questions about why or how. Their aim is to make the reader understand rather than to persuade him or her to accept a certain point of view. In short, arguments are used for persuasion and explanations for clarification.

Like arguments, explanations provide information about causes, contexts, and consequences of processes, phenomena, states of affairs, objects, terminology, and so on. However, in an argument, the writer not only gives information but also presents a case with the “pros” (supporting ideas) and “cons” (opposing ideas) on a debatable issue. Because an argument deals with whether the main claim is true, it demands empirical descriptive evidence, statistics, or definitions for support. When writing an argument, the writer supports his or her claim(s) with sound reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Narrative WritingNarrative writing conveys experience, either real or imaginary, and uses time as its deep structure. It can be used for many purposes, such as to inform, instruct, persuade, or entertain. In English language arts, students produce narratives that take the form of creative fictional stories, memoirs, anecdotes, and autobiographies. Over time, they learn to provide visual details of scenes, objects, or people; to depict specific actions (for example, movements, gestures, postures, and expressions); to use dialogue and interior monologue that provide insight into the narrator’s and characters’ personalities and motives; and to manipulate pace to highlight the significance of events and create tension and suspense. In history/social studies, students write narrative accounts about individuals. They also construct event models of what happened, selecting from their sources only the most relevant information. In science, students write

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narrative descriptions of the step-by-step procedures they follow in their investigations so that others can replicate their procedures and (perhaps) reach the same results. With practice, students expand their repertoire and control of different narrative strategies.

Exemplars of Student Writing Samples Related to Core StandardsThis document also includes writing samples that have been annotated to illustrate the criteria required to meet the Common Core State Standards for particular types of writing—argument (opinion), informative/explanatory text, and narrative—in grades 2 and 3. Each of the samples exhibits at least the level of quality required to meet the writing standards for that grade.

The range of accomplishment within each grade reflects differences in individual development as well as in the conditions under which the student writers were expected to work. Some of the samples were written in class or as homework; others were written for on-demand assessments; still others were the result of sustained research projects. Where possible, each sample includes information about the circumstances under which it was produced. The samples come from students in grades 2 and 3. The students attended school in a number of states and districts across the country.

In grades 2 and 3, the samples include “opinion” writing, an elementary type of argument in which students give reasons for their opinions and preferences. Because reasons are required, such writing helps prepare students for drafting the arguments they will be expected to create beginning in grade 6.

AcknowledgmentThe Standards work group would like to express its appreciation to teachers and students at Monte Vista High School in California and the Randolph Technical Career Center in Vermont; other colleagues in California, Massachusetts, and Washington state; and ACT, Inc., and the Concord Review, who helped find and obtain permission for several of the samples included in the set. The group also would like to express its appreciation to the New Standards Project and to the International Reading Association, which allowed the use of several samples from their publications, and to the other student writers who granted permission to reproduce their work here.

PermissionsThe following student writing samples have been reprinted for the Common Core State Standards Initiative with the express permission of the following organizations and individuals.

The National Center on Education and the Economy, on behalf of New Standards:“Owl Moon”; “My first tooth is gone”; “Horses”; “When my Puppys Ranaway”

Following are writing samples that have been annotated to illustrate the criteria required to meet the Common Core State Standards for particular types of writing—argument (opinion), informative/explanatory text, and narrative—in grades 2 and 3. Each of the samples exhibits at least the level of quality required to meet the Writing standards for that grade.

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Grade 2Student Sample: Grade 2, Argument (Opinion)This opinion piece about a work of literature was produced in class.

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AnnotationThe writer of this piece introduces the topic (with some words from the book) and the title.

o When you go owling you don’t need words, or worm (warm) or any thing. but hope. This is (from) the book of Owl Moon.

states an opinion about the book and supplies reasons to support the opinion.o I like that phrase Because The boy was happy becaus (because) he got to go owling and hes (he’s)

been wonted (wanting) to go owling for a long time and he finally got to go.When other kids are happy that makes me happy.

uses linking words to connect opinion and reasons.o I like it Because it makes me feel good Because you don’t haf’t (have) to have words to go owling

but you haf’t to have hope to see an owl. provides a concluding statement.

o I like it Because it makes me feel good Because you don’t haf’t (have) to have words togo owling but you haf’t to have hope to see an owl.

demonstrates growing command of the conventions of standard written English.o This piece illustrates the writer’s understanding that capital letters are used in a title, that the

pronoun I should be capitalized, and that sentences should begin with a capital letter. The title of the book is underlined, and most words are spelled correctly. The use of the comma and the apostrophe is not consistent, but all sentences end with periods.

o

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Student Sample: Grade 2, NarrativeThis narrative was produced in class, and the writer likely received support from the teacher.

My first tooth is goneI recall one winter night. I was four. My sister and I were running down the hall and something happend. It was my sister and I had run right into each other. Boy! did we cry. But not only did I cry, my tooth was bleeding. Then it felt funny. Then plop! There it was lying in my hand. So that night I put it under my pillow and in the morning I found something. It was not my tooth it was two dollars. So I ran down the hall, like I wasen’t supposed to, and showed my mom and dad. They were suprised because when they lost teeth the only thing they got is 50¢.

AnnotationThe writer of this piece establishes a situation in time and place appropriate for what is to come.

o I recall one winter night. I was four. My sister and I were running down the hall and something happend.

recounts a well-elaborated sequence of events using temporal words to signal event order.o My sister and I were running down the hall and something happend. . . . But not only did I cry . . .

Then it felt funny. Then plop! There it was lying in my hand. includes details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings.

o Boy! did we cry.o Then it felt funny.o So I ran down the hall, like I wasen’t supposed to, and showed my mom and dad

provides a sense of closure.o They were suprised because when they lost teeth the only thing they got is 50¢.

demonstrates growing command of the conventions of standard written English.o This piece illustrates the writer’s largely consistent use of beginning-of-sentence capitalization and

end-of-sentence punctuation (both periods and exclamation points). The pronoun I is also capitalized consistently, and almost all the words are spelled correctly. The writer sets off a parenthetical element with commas and uses an apostrophe correctly.

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Grade 3Student Sample: Grade 3, Informative/ExplanatoryThis informative report is a process piece that was produced in class.

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AnnotationThe writer of this piece introduces a topic.

o I chose horses because I like to ride them. . . . Horses are so beautiful and fun to ride. creates an organizational structure (using headers) that groups related information together.

o Horse Families; Markings; Breeds and Color Coats; Horses from Different Countries develops the topic with facts and details.

o Hocaidos are from Japan, Sumbas are from Indonesia, and Pintos are from America.o A horse can walk, trot, canter, and gallop.o They [horses] live about 12 to 14 years.o The most dangerous horse is the Percheron.

uses linking words and phrases to connect ideas within categories of information.o I like Morgans because they have a beautiful reddish-brown coat.o When a foal is ready to be born, the mare (the mother horse) lies down.o The first horses were no bigger than a fox and looked like a donkey.o Most horses live on farms or ranches, but some horses are wild.

provides a concluding section.o I like horses and I know a lot about them. I like to ride them and they’re so beautiful!o Their coats are beautiful, I wish I had a horse of my own!

demonstrates growing command of the conventions of standard written English (with occasional errors that do not interfere materially with the underlying message).

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Student Sample: Grade 3, NarrativeThis narrative was produced in class, and the writer likely received support from the teacher.

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AnnotationThe writer of this piece establishes a situation and introduces the narrator.

o ONE night when the air was warm, my puppys were sleeping on the back porch. . . . I turned out my lamp. I wuldn’t go to sleep. . . . I saw my mom geting ready to walk out the door. . . . She had a worried exspression on her face. I knew somthing was wrong.

organizes an event sequence that unfolds naturally and uses temporal words and phrases to signal event order.

o When I opened The back door I excpected my puppys Maggie and Tucker to jump up on me. They didn’t come at all. I called, they still didn’t come. Now I knew something was wrong.

uses dialogue and description of characters’ actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations.

o I asked “where are you going”? “Just for a drive” she replied. She had a worried exspression on her face.

o I knew somthing was wrong.o I went to my room and cried.o The next day I still worried. I worried all through school.o Her eyes started to fill with tears as she answered my question with 3 words, “I don’t know,” she

burst into tears. So did I. She hugged me.o I went outside and sat in moms rocking chair. I cried some more.o I’ve got over them leaving because mom says we can get 2 new puppys very soon.

provides a sense of closure.o I’ve got over them leaving because mom says we can get 2 new puppys very soon.

demonstrates growing command of the conventions of standard written English (with occasional errors that do not interfere materially with the underlying message).

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