Examining Common Core Anchor Standard W8

This week, we are breaking down College and Career Readiness Anchor standard W8. We are focusing on the anchor standards because all content area and grade level standards for literacy are "anchored" to these main objective standards.

The purpose of of this work is to distill the Common Core standards down to a workable list of skills that classroom teachers can teach. We also want to empower teachers by giving them a process that they can use to break down additional state and local standards/learning outcomes.

Marking the Standard

To break down a standard, start with the Marking a Text analytical reading skill. Circle the directive verbs in the standard and underlined what those verbs say our students need to know and do. 

Breaking the Standard into Skills

Once we have isolated the key literacy skills that make up the standard, we can organize them in a simple three column table.

Here is another way to visually represent the key literacy skills in the standard.

From our analysis, College and Career Anchor Standard W8 asks students to identify and evaluate multiple print and digital sources and incorporate those sources into the flow of ideas. When practicing standard W8, students learn how to directly quote and/or paraphrase ideas from sources. The reading skills outlined in the table above will help your students meet this standard. We hope that when we break the standard into manageable parts, it becomes easier to understand and teach.

Common Core Tools

To learn more about teaching standard W8, go to our Common Core Writing section. You can also use our Skill-Based Lesson Planner to plan a lesson that explicitly teaches this standard.

Let us know what you think about our Common Core standard break down. Join the conversation and share this page with others.