Anchor Standards for Writing K-12

  • The K–12 standards define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards below by number.

    The CCR and grade-specific standards are necessary complements—the former providing broad standards, the latter providing additional specificity—that together define the skills and understandings that all students must demonstrate.



    CCR_ Anchor Standards for Writing K-12


    Text Types and Purposes

    1. Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
      • Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
      • Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.
      • Use words, phrases, and clauses to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among claim(s), counterclaims, reasons, and evidence.
      • Establish and maintain a formal style.
      • Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the argument presented.
    2. Write informative/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events, scientific procedures/ experiments, or technical processes.
      • Introduce a topic clearly, previewing what is to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information into broader categories as appropriate to achieving purpose; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
      • Develop the topic with relevant, well-chosen facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples.
      • Use appropriate and varied transitions to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts.
      • Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
      • Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone.
      • Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented.

    3. (See note; not applicable as a separate requirement)


    Production and Distribution of Writing

    4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

    5. With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on how well purpose and audience have been addressed.

    6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas clearly and efficiently.


    Research to Build and Present Knowledge

    7. Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

    8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.

    9. Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis reflection, and research.


    Range of Writing

    10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.


    Responding to Literature


    11. Develop personal, cultural, textual, and thematic connections within and across genres as they respond to texts through written, digital, and oral presentations, employing a variety of media and genres     




    Notes:
    Text Types and Purposes:

    Three Types of Writing

    The CCS’s emphasis on three major kinds-of-writing: narrative, informational and opinion, and by the specific learning pathways and exemplar text provided to illustrate what students should be able to do within those genre. The Common Core support more informational writing in the upper elementary and secondary school grades and more of an emphasis on the traditions of logical argument into work with opinion writing.

    The emphasis in the Common Core standards is on higher-level comprehension, therefore it is important to develop and promote performance assessments tools for tracking students’ progress towards becoming proficient at synthesis, interpretation, critical reading, and at learning to think between elements and ideas in texts.

    The Common Core place a special emphasis on across-text work, emphasizing the importance for students to read-to-learn in social studies, science and math classrooms. The emphasis in the informational reading section of standards is on a particular kind of nonfiction reading. Although there is a place for students to ask questions, and use appendices and tables of contents to skim and scan texts to find answers to those questions, the Common Core Standards emphasize instead the sort of reading that one does in order to take in an entire nonfiction text.

    This includes understanding the main ideas and the main ways of structuring those ideas, and reading in such a manner that one could teach someone else the essential content of a nonfiction text.