Common Core Standards and Shifts

Anchor Standard	Instructional Shift	How to Teach It
RL.2.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.	This can be taught by having the students read the stories Little Red Riding Hood and Little Red Cowboy Hat. Once they read the 2 stories they can fill out a Venn diagram to show how they compared and contrasted the central messages in each.  The students can draw pictures that show their comparisons.
RL 3.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.	This can be taught to students by having them read a fable, folktale, or myth of their choosing.  Once they determine the central theme of that story they will write a fable, myth, or folktale of their own with the same theme.  This will show that they understand how to identify the key details because they will have to include them in their own writing.
RL.4.2 Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.	Determine the theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.	This lesson can be taught by choosing a featured poet.  Each student will choose a poem from this poet, determine the theme of the poem, summarize what the poem is about, and write their own poem using the same theme.

 

My thinking about this is to have the students engage in writing their own pieces of literature at every step. In second grade they can fill out a Venn diagram showing their comparisons and contrasts.  In third grade they can write their own fable, myth, or folktale to show the central theme and key details of a piece of writing.  For fourth grade the students will be introduced to poetry and can be asked to begin writing their own poetry. I think it's important to have them writing in every step of the way. 

I also find it interesting that the standard for 3rd grade expands on the goal from 2nd grade by having the students not only determine what the central theme of the fable, myth or folktale is, but also having them explain how it's conveyed in the story using key details.  I find this to be an interesting way to introduce students to identifying key details in a story.  I also like that from there they expand even further for 4th grade by introducing drama and poetry.  I can remember in my experience I didn't read a play until 6th grade, and I really enjoyed it!  I would've much preferred reading plays earlier in my education rather than some of the junk I was forced to read!