By the end of grade 11, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 11–CCR text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

By the end of grade 12, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of the grades 11–CCR text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Breakin’ it Down:

This standard is meant as a guideline for your syllabus or curriculum to ensure your class readings are constantly increasing in difficulty. The idea is also to make sure that students are reading texts with the same difficulty and complexity as other students across the nation, and that they are able to comprehend these texts with increasing independence and proficiency.

Remember, these last two years are the final coaching students get before they are all alone in the student union with their hundred-pound English anthology. The Common Core Standards provide a list of suggested genres and example texts, but there is a ton of wiggle-room here. Use these suggestions as a guide to the level of complexity students should be reading, but choose the texts that your students will relate to or find most accessible.

NOTE: No one list of texts is better than another, but if you are teaching AP English, there are released lists of the texts that appear most frequently on the free-response essay section. Knowing what works or genres students are expected to be familiar with is helpful.

By the way, CCR stands for College and Career Readiness, and you can find out more about this on the Common Core Standards site. Basically 11-CCR means 11th grade through “graduation-ready.”