Critical Reading Skills
Good reading means finding big ideas, learning new words, fixing sentences, and using correct grammar.
These skills help you understand stories and write clearly. When you practice these, you feel confident in school and can share your ideas better.
They also prepare you for harder important tests in the future.
Information and Ideas
- Understanding central ideas and themes
- Identifying main ideas and key details
- Making inferences and drawing conclusions
- Interpreting textual evidence
- Understanding relationships between ideas (cause/effect, compare/contrast)
Craft and Structure
- Word meaning in context (including tone or connotation)
- Analyzing purpose, point of view, and rhetorical strategy
- Evaluating structure or effectiveness of a text
- Understanding figurative language and tone
Expression of Ideas
- Revising text for clarity, conciseness, and effectiveness
- Improving organization and transitions
- Refining sentence structure or word choice
Standard English Conventions
- Sentence structure (fragments, run-ons, clauses)
- Usage (subject-verb agreement, pronoun clarity, verb tense)
- Punctuation (commas, apostrophes, colons, semicolons)
- Modifiers and parallel structure
Passage Types
- Literary Narrative (fiction/excerpt): Focus on theme, character, tone
- Historical or Informational: Focus on argument, purpose, claims and evidence
- Science & Social Studies: Focus on logic, explanation, and scientific reasoning