STANDARD
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Six Text Type Pairings for Critical Thinking
& Common Core Success
Clips of the 2012 award winning film, Lincoln, could be paired with other genres as means of
analyzing the transformation of ideas between primary texts, secondary texts, and multimedia
performance.
Where are you with the Common Core Standards? Are all stakeholders on board or is there a civil
war going on in your school or community? Is school leadership supporting instructional change in
your building or your district? Are teachers working independently to keep up on change without
focused systematic support by educational leadership? Are teachers fighting change, asserting “this
too shall pass?”
Regardless of the position of the teachers in your school, the leadership of your institution, or even
your personal adherence to the standards, you can do your students an intellectual favor by pairing
texts for purposes of increased knowledge and critical questioning. As quality teachers, we may differ
on our support of the standards, but we stand hand in hand when it comes to the ultimate objective
of our work: to support the growth of thinking minds and build on our students’ current levels of
performance in their quest of ever-expanding potential.
Passages from this biography could be compared to clips from the 2012 award winning Lincoln
movie to meet some aspects of the pairing standards.
Lofty goals? Yep, but that is what education aspires to achieve. So, how are we going to get there?
Good teachers already ask students to read multiple texts to glean information and measure
influence and bias. Many of the Common Core State Standards ask that students continue to read
critically in this fashion. Although standards 1-3 are primarily about a single text, many of the anchor
reading standards beyond standard four expect students to go beyond analyzing individual texts by
comparing texts as early as grade three. Throughout the grades and across standards, students are
asked to look at multiple passages linked by theme, topic, structure, or presentation as means look
beyond a single perspective and appreciate the multiplicity and diversity of human thought and
creativity. The Common Core Standards are explicit on this and as a document guide teachers in six
categories (PARCC RFP 13-29) by which texts can and should be compared.
Primary focus 1: comparison of literary elements.
This is primarily the heavy lifting of Reading Standard for Literature #9 in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, and 1112. For standards RL.3.9, RL4.6, and RL.5.9 the texts must be fiction. For RL4.5 the texts must be
poems, drama or prose. For RL.6.9 more than one literary genre must be used and for the high
school band, texts must be chosen from the same period in American literature. Using an extension
of the Lincoln examples shown as illustrations, one could compare elegies written by contemporaries
on his assassination analyzing how “two or more texts from the same period treat similar topics and
themes” by looking at poetic structure and device.
Primary focus 2: comparison of central ideas, topics, points of
view.
This is primarily the heavy lifting of Reading for Informational Text Standard #9 and Standard 6 in
grades 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and grade bands 9-10 for ELA and History/Social Science as well as grade band
11-12 in Reading in History/Social Sciences, and grade band 9-10 in Science & Technical Subjects.
When addressing this standard, students (and teachers) should be asking questions that move
beyond superficial observation and look at point-of-view, evaluate evidence, analyze emphasis. In
grade 3, the texts must be on the same topic; in grade 4 the texts must be first and second-hand
accounts; in grades 5, as well as in RH bands 9-10 and 11-12 the texts must be on the same topic with
distinguishable points-of-view for comparison; in grade 8 the texts must provide conflicting
evidence, and in grade 9 the texts must be among those from seminal U.S. historical documents
w/literary significance.
Primary focus 3: comparing different versions of the same text.
With one exception (RI.7.7), this text pairing represents Standard #7 Reading for Literature at
grades 4, 6, 7, 8, and grade band 11-12. In this pairing, readers compare an original text with a
rendition of that text in an audio or video presentation. For example, students may be provided with
the text of speech or a poem and listen to and/or view the original delivery of that speech or a
professional rendering of a poem.
Primary focus 4: transformation of ideas.
This set of standards asks that readers analyze texts for the transformation of ideas from one text to
another. Therefore, readers must be provided with both texts: the original and the derivative texts.
The grade level standards range from the identical events portrayed in separate texts to primary
source transformed into fictional texts, to presentation of through varietal mediums. In the
disciplines of history, the texts must be primary and secondary sources, while in science and
technical subjects, the texts must show transformation of words into visual formats and visual
formats into words.This may be texts classified as primary and secondary in the history/social
studies discipline or may be texts with ideas that are transformed through genre. This high level of
analysis begins at grade 6 and continues through grade 12 in both literature and informational texts
as well as within the disciplines of history/social studies and science/technical subjects.
Primary focus 5: integration of information.
This pairing category is directed at informational/disciplinary reading. The cognitive demands of
these standards are less focused on direct comparison as seen in some of the previous pairing and
more focused on how readers incorporate or draw on understanding gained through reading the
multiple sources to synthesize, analyze and/or evaluate the information. This type of paring is found
in the Reading for Information Standards: 4.9, 5.7, 5.9, 6.7, 11-12.7; Reading in History/Social
Studies 6-8.7, 9-10.7, 11-12.7, 11-12.9; Reading in Science/Technical Subjects 11-12.7, 11-12.9.
Primary focus 6: analysis of text structure.
This particular pairing is only required by Reading Anchor #5 in grade 5 and grade 8. In grade five,
the standard asks readers to both compare and contrast elements of overall structure while the grade
8 standard asks readers to analyze how structure contributes to meaning and style.