Analyzing Dynamic Texts
We continue our
examination of the Common Core State Standards this year, by looking at
the third anchor standard which asks students to “analyze how and why
individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.”
Again, you will probably observe that this is certainly a different
approach to reading or examining a text, at least in comparison to our former
model of reading which focused more simply on understanding main idea,
inference, and evaluating credibility. For anchor standard three, students
are asked to consider the text as a whole, to consider how things change over
the duration of that text.
For literature, this means
that readers will have to look at how a given character develops or transforms
over the course of a story. Of course, it assumes that at least one of
the characters is actually dynamic, meaning they evolve or change, which is
generally true of the texts we choose, but not always. In cases where the
characters are dynamic, teachers will need to help students recognize first how
they change and second what causes that change. To do this, it will mean
helping them to re-read and review sections of text to take a second or even
third look at
what the text says to
suggest that change.
For content readings
(social studies and science), anchor standard three will ask readers to
consider communities, cultures, or systems that evolve or change over the
course of the text. However, you might notice that not all of your
readings will lend themselves to this type of analysis. For example, the
DNA chapter might not be organized in terms of a dynamic evolution.
Instead, it might start with general principles of DNA and move into more
specific details of how it is structured and how it operates. In this
case, the DNA itself isn’t really changing or evolving, so it wouldn’t really
pay to examine the text in such a fashion. In a broader sense, you might
ask students to consider how the text is organized and how it “moves” from
broad to specific principles, but that is really the territory of another
anchor standard.
For this month’s newsletter, I will offer a
graphic organizers that will enable readers to consider how people,
events, or ideas interact or change through the course of the text. One
is designed using the language of fiction, while the other is more broadly
worded to accommodate a content field.
Find the full newsletter here.
