Checklist for CCSS-Aligned Literacy Exemplars

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Cynthia Jimes

Checklist for CCSS-Aligned Literacy Exemplars

This document lists guiding questions as a checklist for K-12 educators in creating Common Core-aligned exemplars that focus on the ELA literacy standards across disciplines. 

1. The Lesson is Built Around a Set of Informational Texts

  • Have the anchor text (the main text) and supporting texts been selected and sequenced to develop literacy skills and build knowledge about a topic or subject? Are instruction and student activities centered on the texts? 

  • Is the anchor text "anchored" within the lesson? Is the lesson structured so that the anchor text is revisited again and again throughout the unit/lesson? How many times do you refer your students back to the anchor text? What do they do when they revisit it? Great anchor texts are so complex, but they are dissected by students over time.  

  • Do instruction and student activities provide for close reading of the sources, examination of textual evidence, participation in discussions and writing, application to real world situations, and opportunities to write and speak about new understandings?

Informational texts can include observations, data, artifacts, first hand accounts, records and evidence collected from witnesses, scientists, and others, that convey information about the natural and social world. Examples of such sources are: informative or explanatory texts, scientific literature, specimens, data sets, oral histories, autobiographies, memoirs, opinion pieces, journalistic accounts, photographs, maps, realia, graphs, documents, charts, and speeches in various media and formats.

2. The Lesson Is Aligned with the Common Core

  • Does instruction target a specific grade-level standard or set of standards? 
Consider unit CCSS learning focus goals and lesson subject specific learning goals as a whole when you outline instruction and assessment for this lesson. Build student activities and tasks that focus on the text and its close reading, examination of textual evidence, building of arguments from the text, development of thoughtful speech and academic vocabulary, and speaking and writing about new understandings.

3. The Lesson Develops Students’ Literacy

  • Are learning activities designed and sequenced to develop students’ literacy and emphasize the key areas of focus (shifts) in literacy instruction?

4. The Lesson Directs Learning through Questions

  • Have text-based and topic specific questions been identified in the lesson to promote close reading of primary source texts? 
  • Do the questions relate to an overall essential question(s) that unifies learning across sources, disciplines, and lessons?

  • Does each subject area addressed in the lesson offer a set of text-dependent questions?

5. The Lesson Integrates Learning Across Disciplines

  • Is instruction designed (and, for K-5, sequenced) to integrate learning across subject areas? 

  • Are standards, key areas of focus, and/or essential ideas addressed in lessons  that focus on the subject areas that your lesson covers?

6. The Lesson Aligns Assessment with Instruction

  • Does the culminating student task provide for summative assessment of the standards targeted and the skills and knowledge developed during the unit? 
  • Do student activities/tasks within lessons provide opportunities to develop and formatively assess the targeted skills and knowledge?

7. The Lesson Considers Background Knowledge and Prerequisite Skills

  • Have you identified previous learning that might be needed for students to succeed in the unit? 
  • Do you identify how students’ background and skills might be pre-assessed to determine their readiness for learning?

8. The Lesson Provides Support While Building Toward Independence

  • Are all students supported in reading (and/or extending beyond) text of grade-level complexity? 
  • Have you identified what additional support might be provided for students who are ELL, have disabilities, or read well below grade level?

9. The Lesson Organizes Instructional Activities into a Coherent Sequence

  • Have you outlined the major instructional activities, and how they should be sequenced to provide a coherent progression of learning?    

10. The Lesson is Easy to Use for Future Teachers

  • Is each section of your lesson filled in and complete (and if relevant, are components of the lesson fleshed out for each subject area addressed)?
  • Is the lesson formatted in a way that future teachers can easily grasp and read it? Have bullets, headings, and other formatting tools been used to make your lesson more readable?
  • Are texts and the text sets accessible to future teachers? Have you included  the complete name/title of each text to be used in the lesson, and is a link/URL  provided for each text (where available)?
  • Are the use permissions that you selected for your lesson conducive to future remixing and revising by future teachers? (e.g. Creative Commons-Attribution Only.)
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