Common Core ELA Standards by Grade (K–5), Explained in Plain English

The Common Core ELA standards ask students to do the same core things every year (read closely, use evidence, write clearly, speak and listen well, and control grammar and vocabulary) while the texts get more complex and the support fades, so the best way to read them by grade is to follow one skill up the ladder from kindergarten to 5th grade. This guide walks through each strand in plain English, shows what changes from grade to grade, and gives you a sentence you can put on a lesson plan without copying the whole standards document. If you need the background on what the standards are and how codes work, start with our Common Core standards guide.

How the ELA standards are built

Every grade-level standard sits under an anchor standard. The anchors are the same from kindergarten to 12th grade; for example, Reading anchor 1 says, in short, that students read closely to figure out what a text says and cite evidence. The kindergarten version asks a child to ask and answer questions about key details with prompting and support. The 5th grade version asks students to quote accurately from a text when explaining what it says and when drawing inferences. Same skill, very different expectations.

That design is good news for planning. Once you know which anchor a standard belongs to, you can see what your students should have learned last year and what they need for next year. It also explains why the wording feels repetitive: the verbs and the level of independence carry most of the change.

Kindergarten: with prompting and support

The phrase that shows up again and again in kindergarten is “with prompting and support.” In reading, children ask and answer questions about key details, retell familiar stories, and name characters, settings and major events. In informational text, they identify the main topic and a few details. Foundational skills carry most of the weight: knowing that print goes left to right, recognizing and naming all upper- and lowercase letters, hearing rhymes and syllables, blending and segmenting sounds in simple words, and reading common high-frequency words.

Kindergarten writing is a mix of drawing, dictating and writing. A child might draw a picture of a favorite book and write “I like it bks it is funy.” That counts. The point is that students start to state an opinion, name a topic or tell about an event in order. In language, they print letters, use frequently occurring nouns and verbs, and begin to capitalize the first word of a sentence and the pronoun I.

A plain-English line for a kindergarten plan: “Students retell a familiar story with key details, using picture cards for support (RL.K.2).”

1st grade: more independence, more text

First grade drops much of the prompting language. Students ask and answer questions about key details on their own, retell stories including key details, and describe characters, settings and major events using details. They start to identify words and phrases in stories that suggest feelings. In informational text, they use text features such as headings and tables of contents, and they compare two texts on the same topic.

Foundational skills grow quickly: final -e and common vowel team conventions, decoding two-syllable words, reading grade-level text with purpose and understanding, and self-correcting. Writing moves to short pieces that state an opinion and supply a reason, name a topic and give some facts, or recount two or more events in order with a sense of closure.

Plain-English line: “Students read a short informational text and use the headings to find two facts about the topic (RI.1.5).”

2nd grade: explaining how and why

Second graders answer who, what, where, when, why and how questions, recount stories including fables and folktales from different cultures, and figure out the central message or lesson. They describe how characters respond to major events, and they acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, for example by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading aloud.

In informational text, they identify the main topic of a multiparagraph text and the focus of specific paragraphs, and describe how reasons support specific points the author makes. Foundational skills target long and short vowels in regularly spelled one-syllable words, two-syllable words with long vowels, and fluency. Writing asks for opinion pieces with reasons and linking words, informative pieces with facts and definitions, and narratives with details about actions, thoughts and feelings.

Plain-English line: “Students identify the lesson of a fable and explain which event teaches it (RL.2.2).”

3rd grade: referring explicitly to the text

Third grade is the year evidence becomes explicit. Students ask and answer questions to show understanding, “referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.” They determine the central message and explain how it is conveyed through key details, describe characters’ traits, motivations or feelings, and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events. They also distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or characters.

Informational reading asks students to describe the relationship between a series of events, ideas or steps, and to compare the most important points of two texts on the same topic. In writing, opinion pieces need reasons linked with words like because, therefore and since, and informative pieces group related information together, often with illustrations. Language standards add abstract nouns, regular and irregular verbs, simple verb tenses, and comparative and superlative adjectives.

Plain-English line: “Students answer questions about a chapter and point to the sentence that proves each answer (RL.3.1).”

4th grade: details, examples and inferences

Fourth grade asks students to refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what it says explicitly and when drawing inferences. They determine a theme from details, summarize the text, and describe a character, setting or event in depth. They explain major differences between poems, drama and prose, and compare the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including first- and third-person narrations.

In informational text, students explain events, procedures, ideas or concepts, including what happened and why, and they integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak knowledgeably. Writing shifts to clearly organized multi-paragraph pieces with an introduction, linked reasons, facts and details, and a concluding statement. Fourth graders also start using research more formally, taking notes and categorizing information.

Plain-English line: “Students summarize a story and state its theme using two details as support (RL.4.2).”

5th grade: quoting, comparing and integrating

Fifth grade raises the bar on evidence again: students quote accurately from a text when explaining what it says and when drawing inferences. They determine a theme, including how characters respond to challenges or how a speaker in a poem reflects on a topic, and they compare and contrast two or more characters, settings or events, drawing on specific details.

In informational text, they explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas or concepts based on specific information, analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, and draw on information from multiple print or digital sources. Writing expects logically ordered reasons supported by facts, linking with phrases and clauses such as consequently and specifically, and conclusions related to the opinion presented.

Plain-English line: “Students compare how two accounts describe the same event, quoting each source (RI.5.6).”

Following one skill across the grades

Here is how one anchor, citing evidence, grows across the elementary years. Use a table like this when you plan intervention or enrichment, because it tells you exactly which step comes before and after.

If a 4th grader still struggles to answer “why” questions about a short story, look back at the 2nd and 3rd grade versions of that standard and teach that step first.

Turning standards into lessons

Reading standards are not a curriculum. They tell you what students should be able to do, not which book to read or how long to spend on it. When you plan, pick one or two standards per lesson, write a student-friendly learning target, and decide how you will check that students met it. Our guide on how to align lessons to standards shows how to unpack a standard in four steps, and the post on how to read and cite standard codes explains what each part of a code like RL.3.1 means.

Remember that standards also assume students can read the texts in front of them. In kindergarten through 2nd grade, the foundational skills strand is where most of the instructional time goes, and the comprehension standards are often taught through read-alouds. A child who cannot yet decode a grade-level passage can still meet RL.2.2 by listening to a fable and explaining its lesson.

A note on your state

The wording above follows the original Common Core State Standards. Your state may use a renamed or revised version with small differences in numbering or wording, and a few states use different standards entirely. Before you paste a code into a lesson plan or a report, open your state’s official standards document and match the language. Our post on which states still use Common Core explains the current landscape.

For the full picture, including the math standards, coding system and how the standards connect to curriculum and assessment, visit our Common Core standards guide.