Common Core Standards: ELA
ELA: KINDERGARTEN - GRADE 12
LITERACY: GRADES 6 - 12
By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, 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, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 11–CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.
Breakin’ it Down:
This standard is meant as a guideline for your syllabus or curriculum to ensure your class readings are constantly increasing in difficulty. The idea is also to make sure that students are reading texts with the same difficulty and complexity as other students across the nation, and that they are able to comprehend these texts with increasing independence and proficiency.
Remember, these last two years are the final coaching students get before they are all alone in the student union with their hundred-pound English anthology. The Common Core Standards provide a list of suggested genres and example texts, but there is a ton of wiggle-room here. Use these suggestions as a guide to the level of complexity students should be reading, but choose the texts that your students will relate to or find most accessible.
NOTE: No one list of texts is better than another, but if you are teaching AP English, there are released lists of the texts that appear most frequently on the free-response essay section. Knowing what works or genres students are expected to be familiar with is helpful.
By the way, CCR stands for College and Career Readiness, and you can find out more about this on the Common Core Standards site. Basically 11-CCR means 11th grade through “graduation-ready.”
Teach With Shmoop
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Teaching Guides Using this Standard
- 1984 Teacher Pass
- A Raisin in the Sun Teacher Pass
- A Rose For Emily Teacher Pass
- A View from the Bridge Teacher Pass
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Teacher Pass
- Animal Farm Teacher Pass
- Antigone Teacher Pass
- Beowulf Teacher Pass
- Brave New World Teacher Pass
- Death of a Salesman Teacher Pass
- Fahrenheit 451 Teacher Pass
- Fences Teacher Pass
- Frankenstein Teacher Pass
- Grapes Of Wrath Teacher Pass
- Great Expectations Teacher Pass
- Hamlet Teacher Pass
- Heart of Darkness Teacher Pass
- Julius Caesar Teacher Pass
- King Lear Teacher Pass
- Lord of the Flies Teacher Pass
- Macbeth Teacher Pass
- Moby Dick Teacher Pass
- Narrative of Frederick Douglass Teacher Pass
- Oedipus the King Teacher Pass
- Of Mice and Men Teacher Pass
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Teacher Pass
- Othello Teacher Pass
- Romeo and Juliet Teacher Pass
- Sula Teacher Pass
- The Aeneid Teacher Pass
- The As I Lay Dying Teacher Pass
- The Bluest Eye Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales General Prologue Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales: The Miller's Tale Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue Teacher Pass
- The Cask of Amontillado Teacher Pass
- The Catch-22 Teacher Pass
- The Catcher in the Rye Teacher Pass
- The Crucible Teacher Pass
- The Great Gatsby Teacher Pass
- The House on Mango Street Teacher Pass
- The Iliad Teacher Pass
- The Lottery Teacher Pass
- The Metamorphosis Teacher Pass
- The Odyssey Teacher Pass
- The Old Man and the Sea Teacher Pass
- The Scarlet Letter Teacher Pass
- The Tell-Tale Heart Teacher Pass
- Their Eyes Were Watching God Teacher Pass
- Things Fall Apart Teacher Pass
- To Kill a Mockingbird Teacher Pass
- Twilight Teacher Pass
- Wide Sargasso Sea Teacher Pass
- Wuthering Heights Teacher Pass
|Text Type||Sub-genres to include||Example Texts for Grades 11-12|
The Daily Grind: Teaching the Standard
With an abundant list of texts to choose from and a thousand requirements to meet, be sure to get a head start on planning your reading list. We recommend starting with your state, district, or school reading recommendations and make sure they match up with the national recommendations in terms of range of genres and time periods (see Standard 9 for guidance). As students move through 11th and 12th grades, expect them to read and interpret these texts with greater independence. It might be gradual, but by the time students graduate, they should have the reins firmly in their own two hands.
This drill will be an independent study for students:
- Choose a text from the list above or from a list provided by your teacher.
- Read the text independently, keeping a double-entry reading log to record your questions, thoughts, observations, inferences, and predictions.
- Interpret the central idea of the text through a discussion of theme, characters, symbolism, literary devices, structure, and tone.
- Organize your ideas into a well-developed paper or presentation that demonstrates your depth of understanding of the text and its underlying meanings.
- CAHSEE ELA 6.1 Literary Genres
- How to Read Bestsellers
- Mythology: Keeping Up with the Gods
- Scansion 101
- The Origin Story
- The Telltale Heart
- ACT Reading 1.10 Prose Fiction
- ACT Reading 1.2 Prose Fiction
- ACT Reading 1.4 Social Science Passage
- Adaptable Bestsellers
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 1
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 3
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 4
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 1
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 3
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 6
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.3 Passage Drill 3
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.3 Passage Drill 6
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 7
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 1
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 2
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 6
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 7
- AP English Literature and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill 6
- Bestsellers: The Help
- Bestsellers: Thrillers
- CAHSEE ELA 5.2 Main Idea and Sources
- CAHSEE ELA 5.3 Main Idea and Sources
- CAHSEE ELA 5.4 Main Idea and Sources
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: What’s Up With the Ending?
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Six-Pack Abs
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Using Music Lyrics to Explore Themes, Imagery, and Symbolism
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: The Verona Free Press
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Speaking Shakespeare's Language
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare Goes Modern (Understanding the Bard's Influence)