The Ladder of Reading Standards

I firmly believe in posting and referring to objectives throughout my lessons. It is so critical for students to understand clearly what it is I want them to be learning. But the Common Core State Standards make that a little more difficult because they are not as cut-and-dry as Tennessee's old standards. Most lessons will hit multiple standards. As a result, I've been wrapping my mind around how to post and utilize the standards in my classroom.

While reading Lucy Calkins' Pathways to the Common Core, I found this quote on page 33: "Some people who are close to the Common Core have likened the reading standards to a ladder, with standards 1 and 10 as the crucial struts that form the two sides of the ladder, and the other reading standards as the rungs of the ladder." That helped me visualize the following poster with "I can" statements based the standards:

I think I will remind students daily that we work on close reading of texts, working toward complex grade level texts. Then we will use a magnet to track our progress as we climb the ladder of reading standards with each text.

I created these posters for informational text and literature for grades 1-6. If you would like download them, click here.