The Complete Ladder (K-12)

1236 core topics · approximately 418 hours of instruction including spaced review

How the course runs

An adaptive diagnostic (up to 40 questions) places the student on the course's knowledge graph - topics already known are credited, and instruction begins exactly at the learning frontier. Every topic is taught with a worked-example lesson and auto-graded practice; a topic is mastered at 75%+ and then maintained through spaced reviews on an expanding schedule. Mixed checks follow every 6 lessons; each unit ends with a 12-item quiz, and course-wide assessments appear at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% mastery. Prerequisite gaps below the course are detected and taught rather than skipped, so completion certifies the whole tower, not just the top.

Core curriculum

Phonological & Phonemic Awareness · 11 topics

Hearing Rhymes [E]	Tell when two words end with the same sound.
Finding the Word That Does Not Rhyme [E]	Pick the odd word out of a rhyming set.
Counting Syllables [E]	Break a word into its beats.
Hearing the First Sound [E]	Tell which sound a word starts with.
Hearing the Last Sound [E]	Tell which sound a word ends with.
Hearing the Middle Vowel Sound [E]	Find the vowel sound in the middle of a short word.
Blending Sounds into Words [M]	Push separate sounds together to make a word.
Breaking Words into Sounds [M]	Split a word into every separate sound.
Taking a Sound Away [M]	Say a word again with one sound removed.
Changing One Sound [M]	Swap one sound for another to make a new word.
Words That Begin Alike [E]	Group words by their beginning sound.

Phonics: Letters, Sounds & Short Vowels · 6 topics

Capital and Lowercase Letters [E]	Match every capital letter to its lowercase partner.
Letter Sounds [E]	Say the sound each letter stands for.
Short Vowel Sounds [E]	Hear and write the five short vowel sounds.
Reading Short Words [M]	Sound out and read consonant-vowel-consonant words.
Spelling Short Words [M]	Write the letter for each sound you hear.
Word Families [E]	Read a whole set of words by learning one ending.

High-Frequency Words & Sight Vocabulary · 3 topics

Recognizing High-Frequency Words [E]	Know the most common words on sight, instantly.
High-Frequency Words in Sentences [E]	Use common words correctly inside a real sentence.
Heart Words [E]	Learn the tricky part of words phonics will not crack.

Print Concepts & Early Comprehension · 4 topics

How Books and Print Work [E]	Know the parts of a book and which way print goes.
Words in a Sentence [E]	Count the separate words in a written sentence.
Listening Comprehension [M]	Understand a story that is read out loud to you.
What Happened First, Next, Last [E]	Put the events of a story in the order they happened.

Sentence & Capitalization Basics · 5 topics

What Makes a Sentence [E]	Tell a complete sentence from a group of words.
Naming Part and Telling Part [E]	Split a sentence into who it is about and what happens.
Capital Letters and End Marks [E]	Start every sentence with a capital and end it with a mark.
Choosing the Right End Mark [E]	Use a period, question mark, or exclamation point.
Capitalizing Names [E]	Capitalize names, places, days, months, and the word I.

Phonics: Consonant Blends & Digraphs · 11 topics

Digraphs at the Start of a Word [E]	Read sh, ch, th, wh and ph at the beginning of a word.
Digraphs at the End of a Word [E]	Read sh, ch, th, ck and ng at the end of a word.
Counting Sounds, Not Letters [M]	Count the sounds in a word that has a blend or a digraph in it.
ph Says /f/ [E]	Read ph as the f sound.
Blends at the Start of a Word [M]	Read two and three consonants blended together at the start of a word.
Blends at the End of a Word [M]	Read blends like -nd, -mp, -st and -nk at the end of a word.
Three-Letter Blends [M]	Read str, spr, scr, thr and spl.
Blend or Digraph? [M]	Tell a blend from a digraph by listening to the sounds.
Reading Blend and Digraph Words [M]	Sound out and read a word containing a blend or a digraph.
Spelling Blends and Digraphs [M]	Write the right letters for a blend or digraph you hear.
-ng and -nk [M]	Hear the difference between the endings in ring and rink.

Phonics: Silent-e & Long Vowels · 8 topics

Long Vowel Sounds [E]	Hear a vowel saying its own name.
One Letter Changes the Word [M]	Add or remove a silent e and read the new word.
Short Vowel or Long Vowel? [M]	Decide from the spelling whether a vowel is short or long.
Reading Silent-e Words [M]	Read a silent-e word accurately, without dropping the e.
Spelling with Silent e [M]	Decide whether a word needs a silent e at the end.
Open Syllables: go, he, my [M]	Read a long vowel that got that way by ending the word.
The Silent e Makes No Sound [M]	Count sounds, not letters: a letter team counts once and a silent e not at all.
When Silent e Breaks the Rule [M]	Know the common words where a final e does not make the vowel long.

Phonics: Vowel Teams & Diphthongs · 9 topics

What a Vowel Team Is [M]	Find the letters that team up to spell one vowel sound in a word.
Long a: ai and ay [M]	Read long a spelled with the vowel teams ai and ay.
Long e: ee and ea [M]	Read long e spelled with the vowel teams ee and ea.
Long o: oa and ow [M]	Read long o spelled with the vowel teams oa and ow.
Long i and Long u: igh, ie, ew, ue [M]	Read long i spelled igh or ie, and long u spelled ew or ue.
Which Spelling Goes Where [H]	Choose the right vowel team for a word from the way the word is built.
The Two Sounds of oo [M]	Decide which of its two sounds the vowel team oo is making.
Sounds That Are Neither Long Nor Short [H]	Read the vowel sounds in coin, cloud and saw.
One Team, Two Jobs [H]	Try a team's other sound when the first one does not make a real word.

Phonics: R-Controlled Vowels & Soft C, G · 9 topics

When the r Takes Over the Vowel [M]	Find the vowel that an r has changed, and tell it from an r that only starts a blend.
ar Says /ar/ [M]	Read the /ar/ sound, and know the words where a w changes it.
or Says /or/ [M]	Read the /or/ sound, and know the words where a w changes it.
er, ir, ur: One Sound, Three Spellings [M]	Hear that er, ir and ur all make the same sound.
Choosing Between er, ir, and ur [H]	Pick the right spelling of the /er/ sound for a particular word.
Sorting the Five R-Controlled Spellings [M]	Group ar, or, er, ir and ur by the sound each one makes.
Soft c: When c Says /s/ [M]	Decide whether a c says /k/ or /s/ by looking at the letter after it.
Soft g: When g Says /j/ [M]	Read soft g, and know the common words that break the rule.
The Letter After Decides [H]	Use the following letter to predict what a c or g will say, even in a new word.

Syllable Types & Syllable Division · 9 topics

Counting Syllables by Vowel Sounds [M]	Count the syllables in a written word by counting its vowel sounds.
Closed Syllables: The Vowel Is Short [M]	Recognize a syllable that ends in a consonant and know its vowel is short.
Open Syllables: The Vowel Is Long [M]	Recognize a syllable that ends in a vowel and know that vowel is long.
Open or Closed? Deciding the Vowel Sound [M]	Use the last letter of a syllable to predict whether its vowel is long or short.
The Six Kinds of Syllable [M]	Name which of the six syllable types a chunk of a word is.
Two Consonants in the Middle [M]	Divide a word between two middle consonants and read the closed first syllable.
One Consonant in the Middle: Try Long First [H]	Divide a word with one middle consonant by trying the long vowel first, then flexing.
The -le Ending Takes One Consonant With It [M]	Split off a consonant-le ending and use what is left to set the first vowel.
Reading a Long Word You Have Never Seen [H]	Chunk an unfamiliar multisyllable word and read it one syllable at a time.

Endings, Plurals & Contractions · 9 topics

More Than One: Adding -s [M]	Make a naming word mean more than one by adding -s.
When a Word Hisses: Adding -es [M]	Add -es to words that end in s, x, z, ch, or sh.
Words That End in y [M]	Decide whether a y changes to i by looking at the letter before it.
Words That End in f or fe [M]	Change f to v before the plural ending on the words that take it.
The Plurals You Have to Know by Heart [M]	Use the plural of words that change instead of adding -s.
Reading an -s at the End [H]	Tell a plural -s on a naming word from a verb -s that marks one doer.
Adding -ed and -ing [H]	Apply the doubling, drop-e and y-to-i rules when an ending goes on.
Two Words Made Into One [H]	Match a contraction to the two words it stands for, both ways.
Where the Apostrophe Goes [H]	Place the apostrophe exactly where the missing letters used to be.

Prefixes & Suffixes · 10 topics

Finding the Base Word [M]	Strip the extra parts off a word to find the word underneath.
What a Prefix Means [M]	Know what the common prefixes do to a word.
Using a Prefix to Read a Word [M]	Work out what a prefixed word means without being told.
What a Suffix Means [M]	Know what the common suffixes add to a word.
Using a Suffix to Read a Word [M]	Work out what a word with a suffix means.
Building Words from Parts [M]	Put a prefix, base word, and suffix together into one word.
Reading a Word You Have Never Seen [H]	Work out an unfamiliar word from its prefix, base, and suffix.
Spelling Changes When You Add an Ending [H]	Apply the three rules for adding a suffix to a base word.
Endings Change a Word's Job [M]	See how a suffix turns one kind of word into another.
Choosing the Right Form [H]	Pick the form of a word that a sentence actually needs.

Greek & Latin Roots · 8 topics

What a Root Is [M]	Find the root inside a long word and tell it from a base word.
What the Common Roots Mean [M]	Know what the roots that build academic English actually mean.
Words That Share a Root [H]	Sort words into families by the root they are built on.
Words Built from Two Roots [H]	Read a word built out of two roots by putting both part meanings together, in order.
One Root, Many Prefixes [H]	Use the prefix to tell apart words built on the same root.
Reading a Word You Have Never Met [H]	Work out an unfamiliar word from its root and the sentence together.
When the Letters Lie [H]	Test a root by meaning, not by letters, and catch the look-alikes.
Greek Spelling Clues [H]	Spell the Greek words in science and math, and know why they look odd.

Homophones, Homographs & Word Traps · 8 topics

Words That Sound the Same [M]	Recognize two words that share one sound and nothing else.
Choosing the Right Spelling [M]	Use the meaning of a sentence to choose between two spellings.
its and it's, your and you're [M]	Tell a contraction from a possessive using the long-form test.
One Spelling, Two Meanings [H]	Use the sentence to choose between two unrelated meanings of one word.
One Word, Many Meanings [H]	Pick which of a word's several related meanings a sentence is using.
Words That Are Nearly Twins [H]	Separate two words that look almost alike and mean nothing alike.
The Mistake a Spell Checker Misses [H]	Find a word that is spelled correctly and is still the wrong word.
Same Spelling, Different Sound [H]	Decide how a word is pronounced from the job it does in the sentence.

Word Relationships: Synonyms, Antonyms & Categories · 8 topics

Words That Go Together [M]	Spot the word that belongs with a group, and the word that does not.
Naming the Group [M]	Give a group of words the name that covers all of them.
Parts and Wholes [M]	Tell a piece of something from one kind of something.
Words That Mean Almost the Same [M]	Find a word that means nearly the same as another word.
Words That Mean the Opposite [M]	Find the word that means the opposite of another word.
How Two Words Go Together [H]	Name the relationship between a pair of words.
Some Words Are Stronger [M]	Put words with the same meaning in order of how strong they are.
Choosing the Word That Fits [H]	Choose the word whose strength matches what the sentence says.

Context Clues (Grades 2-3) · 8 topics

When the Sentence Just Tells You [M]	Find a word's meaning written into the sentence itself.
A Nearby Word That Means the Same [M]	Use a synonym elsewhere in the passage to unlock a word.
When a Contrast Points the Other Way [M]	Use a contrast word to work out the opposite meaning.
Working Back From Examples [M]	Use a list of examples to work out the category.
When There Is No Clue Word [H]	Work out a meaning from the whole situation.
Naming the Clue [M]	Say which kind of context clue a sentence is using.
Putting Your Guess Back In [H]	Check a guessed meaning by reading the sentence again with it.
Words With More Than One Meaning [M]	Choose the meaning a sentence needs, not the one you thought of first.

Context Clues & Word Nuance (Grades 4-6) · 8 topics

When the Clue Is Somewhere Else [H]	Find the meaning of a word when the clue sits in a different sentence.
Shades of Meaning [H]	Choose the word whose size matches what actually happened.
Words That Carry a Feeling [H]	Hear the approval or disapproval hidden inside a word choice.
Reporting or Arguing? [H]	Tell a sentence that reports from one that argues, and name the word doing it.
Word Parts Plus Context [H]	Take an unfamiliar word apart and check the pieces against the sentence.
Everyday Words With a School Meaning [H]	Catch a familiar word being used in its science, math, or history sense.
The Words the Directions Use [H]	Know the words that every subject and every test direction line uses.
Can You Swap That Word? [H]	Test a replacement word against meaning, size, and feeling all at once.

Figurative Language & Idioms · 9 topics

Noticing When Words Are Not Literal [M]	Tell when a sentence is not meant exactly as written.
Working Out What It Really Means [M]	Say in plain words what a figure of speech is telling you.
Similes [M]	Read a comparison made with like or as.
Metaphors [M]	Read a comparison that says one thing IS another.
Simile or Metaphor? [M]	Tell the two kinds of comparison apart.
Personification [M]	Spot something not human doing something only people do.
Hyperbole [M]	Read an exaggeration that nobody is meant to believe.
Idioms [H]	Learn set phrases whose meaning the words do not give you.
Naming the Device [H]	Say which kind of figurative language a sentence uses.

Academic Vocabulary · 8 topics

Three Kinds of School Word [M]	Sort a word into everyday, used in every subject, or belonging to one subject.
The Words Every Subject Uses [H]	Give the exact meaning of the words that show up in every subject.
The Everyday Word and the School Word [H]	Match a school word to the everyday wording that means the same thing.
One Word, Many Forms [H]	Choose the right form of an academic word for the slot it has to fill.
The Same Word in a Different Class [H]	Work out which meaning a familiar word carries in a school subject.
Command Words: What the Task Asks For [H]	Name what a direction word is telling you to do before you start writing.
Reading the Question Before You Answer It [H]	Say what a test question requires before looking at the choices.
How Sure Does the Writer Sound? [H]	Tell what a writer is claiming from the verb that carries the claim.

Story Basics: Character, Setting & Events · 8 topics

Who the Story Is About [E]	Name the characters in a story and say what one of them is like.
Where the Story Happens [M]	Name the place a story happens, and say why that place matters.
When the Story Happens [M]	Say what time of day, day of the week, or season a story happens in.
How a Character Feels [M]	Name a feeling a story shows through what a character does.
What a Character Wants [M]	Say what a character is trying to get or trying to do.
What Happens in the Story [M]	Pick out the things that happen, and which one matters most.
Why It Happened [M]	Explain why something in a story happened, using the story.
Character, Setting, or Event? [M]	Sort a piece of a story into character, setting, or event.

Retelling, Sequence & Summary · 7 topics

Who the Story Is About [E]	Name the character a story follows.
First, Next, and Last [M]	Say what happened first, what came in between, and what came last.
Putting the Whole Story in Order [M]	Arrange all the events of a story from beginning to end.
Finding the Problem [M]	Name what goes wrong in a story.
Finding the Solution [M]	Say how a story's problem gets resolved.
Summarizing a Story [H]	Retell a story keeping only what matters.
Knowing What to Leave Out [H]	Spot the detail a summary does not need.

Story Structure: Problem, Plot & Solution · 7 topics

Beginning, Middle, End [M]	Say which part of a story an event belongs to, and what that part is for.
What a Character Wants, and What Is in the Way [M]	Name both halves of a story problem: the want and the thing blocking it.
What Kind of Trouble Is It? [M]	Tell trouble with a person from trouble with the world or with yourself.
The Tries That Do Not Work [M]	Follow the middle of a story as a run of attempts, and say why each fails.
The Moment It Turns [H]	Find the one moment after which a story cannot go back.
How It Ends, and What Is Different [H]	Say how a story settles - fixed, gone around, or accepted - and what changed.
Because of That, Not And Then [H]	Follow a plot as a chain of causes instead of a list of events.

Theme, Lesson & Central Message · 8 topics

Topic or Theme? [M]	Tell the subject of a story apart from what the story says about it.
What a Character Learns [M]	Find the theme by watching what a character understands at the end that they did not understand at the start.
The Moral a Story States [H]	Read a stated moral or saying and check what the story actually backs up.
Saying a Theme in One Sentence [H]	Word a theme so it is neither about one character nor true of every story.
The Evidence for a Theme [M]	Point to the detail that actually supports a theme, not just a true detail.
Themes Nobody Writes Down [H]	Work out a theme from an ending, a silence, or a word the writer chose.
Objects That Carry the Message [H]	Read the object or image a story keeps returning to.
What a Story Does Not Say [H]	Refuse a lesson the text will not support, including the tidy one.

Point of View, Narrator & Perspective · 8 topics

Who Is Telling This [M]	Find the teller of a text before deciding what the text means.
How Much the Teller Knows [H]	Work out how far a teller can see, and what is therefore missing.
What the Teller Cannot See [H]	Assemble what a text shows but its teller has not noticed.
What a Person Makes of It [H]	Separate what happened from what a person in the text made of it.
Words That Give a View Away [H]	Notice the single words that carry a teller's attitude.
One Event, Two Views [H]	Explain why two honest accounts of one event can disagree.
Telling It From Somewhere Else [H]	Predict what changes when the same events get a different teller.
Why the Author Chose This Teller [H]	Explain what a writer gains and loses by choosing a particular teller.

Poetry & Drama · 9 topics

Lines, Stanzas and Where a Poem Breaks [M]	Read a poem's shape on the page as part of what it means.
Rhyme, Rhyme Scheme and Poems Without Either [M]	Hear rhyme, name the pattern it makes, and read a poem that has none.
Repetition, Alliteration and the Sound of a Line [M]	Notice what a poem's sounds are doing besides rhyming.
The Picture a Poem Puts in Your Head [M]	Read the sensory pictures a poem or a stage sets, and say what they do.
Figures of Speech Inside a Poem [H]	Read similes, metaphors and personification where poems pack them tightest.
Who Is Talking in a Poem [M]	Identify the voice speaking a poem, and what that voice reveals.
What the Poem or the Scene Is Saying [H]	State what a poem or a scene is finally about, in a sentence.
How a Play Is Written Down [M]	Read a script: cast list, scene heading, dialogue and stage directions.
Reading What a Scene Is Really Doing [H]	Work out what characters want, what blocks them, and what they will not say.

Comparing & Contrasting Texts · 8 topics

Comparing on the Same Point [H]	Name one point that both texts speak to before you say anything about either of them.
Two Characters, Side by Side [H]	Compare two characters by what each one decides, not by what each one is called.
What the Setting Changes [H]	Ask what a setting makes possible or impossible, not just what it looks like.
Patterns of Events Across Stories [H]	Recognize the shape two stories share, and find the exact place where they stop sharing it.
Same Idea, Different Story [H]	State what each text says about a shared subject, then compare the two statements.
Two Tellers of One Event [H]	Compare who is telling each text and what that teller was in a position to know.
The Same Story in Another Form [H]	Compare what a poem, a play, a story or an explanation can and cannot carry.
Making a Comparison That Says Something [H]	Write a comparison that names the shared point, the difference, and why the difference matters.

Nonfiction Basics: Topic & Key Details · 7 topics

What the Whole Text Is About [M]	Say in a few words what a whole true text is about.
Key Details You Can Point To [M]	Find a fact the text really states, and point to where it says so.
Questions a Text Can Answer [M]	Tell which questions a text answers and which ones it never touches.
New Words in a True Text [M]	Work out what a new word means from the sentences around it.
Titles, Labels, and Captions [M]	Use the title, labels, captions, and contents page to find what you need.
Two Facts That Go Together [M]	Say how one fact in a text leads to another.
Which Fact Matters Most [M]	Choose the facts worth telling back and leave the rest out.

Main Idea & Supporting Details · 7 topics

Topic or Main Idea? [M]	Tell what a text is about from what it says about it.
Finding the Main Idea [M]	Say in one sentence what a whole text is telling you.
Main Ideas That Are Not Written Down [H]	Work out the main idea when no sentence states it.
Details That Back It Up [M]	Find the fact in a text that supports a particular idea.
Choosing the Best Title [M]	Pick a title that names the main idea rather than one detail.
Writing a Summary [H]	Retell a text keeping only what matters.
Telling a Detail from the Main Idea [M]	Spot the sentence that is only a detail.

Text Features & Graphics · 8 topics

What a Heading Promises [M]	Use a title or a heading to say what a part of a page will be about.
Finding the Page You Need [M]	Use a contents page, an index, and headings to find a fact fast.
Bold Words and the Glossary [M]	Notice a word printed in bold and look it up where the book keeps meanings.
The Words Under a Picture [M]	Read a caption for what it adds to the picture and to the text.
Reading a Labeled Diagram [M]	Follow labels and arrows to read a drawing that names its own parts.
Reading a Chart [M]	Read across a row and up a column, and name what the numbers leave out.
Reading a Map and Its Key [M]	Use a key, a compass rose, and a scale to read what a map is showing.
Why the Author Put It There [M]	Say what a text feature does that the sentences alone could not do.

Text Structure in Nonfiction · 8 topics

Words That Give the Shape Away [M]	Spot the words and sentences that tell you how a nonfiction text is organized.
Description: Groups, Parts and Kinds [M]	Recognize a text that describes one thing closely or sorts things into kinds.
Sequence: Time Order and Steps [M]	Follow a text built on the order things happen or the order they are done.
Compare and Contrast [M]	Read a text that sets two things side by side and says how they are alike and different.
Cause and Effect [M]	Trace a text where each thing described makes the next thing happen.
Problem and Solution [M]	Read a text that states a difficulty and then what was done about it.
Naming the Structure of a Whole Text [H]	Decide which structure a whole passage is built on, and notice when it uses more than one.
Why the Writer Chose That Shape [H]	Explain what a text's structure does for the reader, and what would be lost in another shape.

Author's Purpose & Point of View · 8 topics

Why the Author Wrote It [H]	Name what a text was built to do, not just what it is about.
The Evidence for a Purpose [H]	Point to the move in the text that proves what the writer wanted.
Why This Part Is Here [H]	Explain the job a single paragraph, sentence or phrase is doing.
Who It Was Written For [H]	Work out the reader a text was aimed at, and how you can tell.
The Author's Point of View [H]	Say what the writer thinks about the subject, even when no opinion is stated.
Words That Take a Side [H]	Notice how a writer's wording steers what a reader concludes.
Facts, Judgments, and Honest Uncertainty [H]	Sort what can be checked from what is argued, and spot a writer naming their own limits.
Two Writers, One Subject [H]	Compare two texts on one subject and find the exact point where they part.

Inference, Evidence & Summarizing · 8 topics

Stated or Implied? [H]	Tell what a text says outright from what it only lets you conclude.
What One Detail Tells You [H]	Draw the conclusion a single detail supports, and stop there.
The Line That Proves It [H]	Given a claim, find the sentence in the text that actually supports it.
Putting Two Details Together [H]	Reach a conclusion that no single sentence in the text states.
An Objective Summary [H]	Say what a text argued, in its own terms, without taking a side.
Deciding What to Leave Out [H]	Cut the details a summary can lose, and keep the ones it cannot.
Which Evidence Is Strongest [H]	Choose between two relevant details by asking which one settles it.
Inference or Guess? [H]	Spot the step that goes past what the text can carry.

Integrating Multiple Sources · 8 topics

What Your Sources Are Really About [H]	State the one question a set of sources is answering, precisely enough to compare them.
Where Sources Agree [H]	Find the ground two sources share before you look at where they split.
Where Sources Disagree [H]	Locate the exact sentence where two sources stop agreeing.
A Fact Fight or a Meaning Fight [H]	Tell whether two sources disagree about what happened or about what it means.
What Each Source Chose to Include [H]	Notice what one source puts first, and what another leaves out entirely.
Choosing the Source That Can Answer It [H]	Match a question to the source that is actually able to answer it.
Building One Answer from Several Sources [H]	Write one sentence that holds everything the sources support and nothing more.
What None of the Sources Tells You [H]	Name the question your sources leave open, and what would answer it.

Reading in Science: Life Science (Grades 2-4) · 7 topics

The Main Idea of a Science Text [M]	Find what a science passage is really explaining.
Science Words Defined in Place [M]	Work out a technical word from the sentence that introduces it.
Following a Process in Order [M]	Track the steps of a life cycle or a process.
Cause and Effect in Science [M]	Say why something happens, using the text.
Comparing Two Living Things [M]	Say how two organisms or processes differ, and why.
Finding the Evidence [M]	Point to the sentence that proves a claim.
What the Science Actually Says [H]	Use what the passage taught you to answer a real science question.

Reading in Science: Life Science (Grades 5-6) · 8 topics

Technical Words: Parts and Context [M]	Work out a science word from its parts and from the sentence around it.
How a Science Text Is Built [M]	Name the shape a science passage is built in, and use it to find the point.
Reading the Numbers in a Science Text [M]	Read a figure in prose for its unit, its size and how sure it is.
Models and Where They Break [H]	Judge a scientific model by what it predicts and by what it leaves out.
Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning [H]	Separate what a science text asserts from what it shows, and the link between.
Reading an Investigation [H]	Read a described experiment for what it changed, held steady and can show.
Cause, Correlation, and Coincidence [H]	Tell a cause from two things that merely happen together.
What the Science Actually Says [H]	Use what a passage taught you to answer a real life-science question.

Reading in Science: Earth & Space (Grades 2-4) · 8 topics

The Main Idea of an Earth Science Text [M]	Find what an Earth or space passage is really explaining.
Science Words Defined Right There [M]	Work out an Earth or space term from the sentence that introduces it.
Following a Cycle in Order [M]	Track the steps of an Earth or space process in the right order.
Cause and Effect in Earth Science [M]	Say why something on Earth or in space happens, using the text.
Comparing Two Things in Space and on Earth [M]	Say how two places, bodies, or processes differ, and why it matters.
Numbers in a Science Text [M]	Read the measurements in a science passage and reason with them.
Finding the Evidence [M]	Point to the detail that actually proves a claim about Earth or space.
What the Science Actually Says [H]	Use what a passage taught you to answer a real Earth or space question.

Reading in Science: Earth & Space (Grades 5-6) · 8 topics

Words Earth Science Redefines [M]	Read an earth science term for its exact meaning, not its everyday one.
Numbers Too Big to Picture [H]	Handle the huge distances, slow rates and long times an earth science text reports.
Diagrams That Cannot Be to Scale [H]	Judge an earth science model or diagram by what it is built to show.
Loops, Not Lines [H]	Follow a cause around a loop instead of straight down a list.
What Can and Cannot Be Predicted [H]	Tell a real prediction from a question no method can answer.
How We Know What Nobody Watched [H]	Name the measurement that supports a claim about something nobody saw happen.
What the Science Actually Says [H]	Use what a passage taught you to answer a real earth or space science question.
When Science Changes Its Mind [H]	Trace how new evidence overturned an idea scientists had accepted.

Reading in Science: Physical Science & Engineering · 8 topics

Physical Science Words, Defined in Place [M]	Work out a physical science term from the sentence that introduces it.
The Point of a Physical Science Text [M]	Find the mechanism a physical science passage is really explaining.
Running the Mechanism Forward [M]	Say why something physical happens, and follow the chain past one step.
Reading the Measurements [M]	Read numbers in a science passage for size, unit and what they compare.
Which Sentence Actually Proves It [H]	Point to the detail in a science text that settles a particular claim.
Reading a Fair Test [H]	Find what an investigation changed and what it deliberately held still.
What the Better Design Costs [H]	Name what an engineering choice gives up in exchange for what it gains.
Using the Physics on a New Case [H]	Apply a mechanism from the passage to a situation the passage never named.

Reading in Social Studies: American History (2-4) · 7 topics

The Main Idea of a History Text [M]	Find what a history passage is really about.
Putting Events in Time Order [M]	Work out what happened first, and how much time passed.
History Words in Context [M]	Work out what a historical term means from the text around it.
Causes and Consequences [M]	Explain why something happened, and what it led to.
Evidence in a History Text [M]	Point to the detail that actually proves a claim.
Whose Story Is Being Told [H]	Notice whose point of view a history text takes, and who is missing.
What the History Actually Says [H]	Use what the passage taught you to answer a real history question.

Reading in Social Studies: American History (5-6) · 9 topics

Reading a Source Like a Historian [H]	Ask who made a source, when, and what they wanted it to do.
Claims and the Evidence Under Them [H]	Separate what a history text asserts from what it shows.
When Sources Disagree [H]	Compare accounts of the same event instead of trusting one.
What the Wording Gives Away [H]	Notice how a writer's word choices shape what you conclude.
Putting a Source Back in Its Moment [H]	Read a source against what its writer could and could not know.
Summarizing Without Losing the Argument [H]	Write a summary that keeps the point, not just the facts.
Chains of Cause in History [H]	Follow why one thing led to another, and where the chain stops.
Whose Account Is This [H]	Work out whose view a history text carries, and who is missing.
What the History Actually Says [H]	Answer questions about the events themselves, from the text.

Reading in Social Studies: Civics & Government · 7 topics

Civics Words With Exact Jobs [H]	Work out what a government word means from the sentence around it.
Who Holds Which Power [H]	Sort any government action by which job it is and at which level.
Steps, and Where They Stop [H]	Follow a civic process in order and find the points where it can end.
The Claim and the Support Under It [H]	Separate what a civics text asserts from what actually backs it up.
What a Rule Does After It Is Made [H]	Trace the effects a rule produces, including the ones nobody wrote down.
Who a Rule Lands On [H]	Ask whose interest a rule or an account serves, and who it leaves out.
What This Text Wants From You [H]	Identify what a civic text was written to make its reader do or think.

Reading in Social Studies: Geography & Maps · 8 topics

What the Key Tells You [M]	Read a map's key first, so its marks turn into meaning.
Which Way Is That? [M]	Say where one place is in relation to another, using the compass rose.
How Far Is That Really? [M]	Use a map's scale to turn a distance on paper into a distance on the ground.
Finding a Place Exactly [H]	Use grid squares, latitude and longitude to pin down where a place is.
Choosing the Right Map [H]	Match the kind of map to the question you are trying to answer.
The Shape Words [M]	Turn a geography text's shape words into a picture you can reason with.
People and the Land [H]	Explain how land shapes what people do, and how people change the land.
What a Map Cannot Tell You [H]	Name what a map left out, and judge what it can honestly be asked.

Reading in Social Studies: Economics & Culture · 8 topics

Economics Words in Context [H]	Pin down an economics term from the sentences around it.
The Cost of What You Did Not Choose [H]	Name what was given up when somebody in the text made a choice.
Why a Price Moved [H]	Explain a change in price by what happened to supply or to demand.
Reading the Numbers in the Text [H]	Work out what a figure in a social studies text does and does not measure.
Claims About Money, and What Backs Them [H]	Separate what an economics text asserts from what it actually shows.
Who Gains and Who Loses [H]	Trace a decision to the people it helped and the people it cost.
How Culture Moves and Changes [H]	Follow a practice as it travels between peoples and is changed by them.
What the Social Studies Actually Says [H]	Answer questions about the economics and the cultures themselves.

Nouns & Verbs · 8 topics

What a Noun Is [E]	Name the words that stand for a person, place, or thing.
Common Nouns and Proper Nouns [M]	Tell a general noun from the name of one particular thing.
What a Verb Is [E]	Name the words that tell what someone does.
Finding the Verb in a Sentence [M]	Pick out the verb inside a whole sentence.
Verbs That Do Not Show Action [M]	Find is, are, was and were doing a verb's job.
One Word, Two Jobs [M]	Decide whether a word is a noun or a verb from the sentence it is in.
Making the Verb Match [M]	Choose a verb form that matches one thing or many things.
Finding Both Parts [M]	Pick out the noun and the verb in the same sentence.

Adjectives, Adverbs & Pronouns · 9 topics

What an Adjective Is [M]	Name the words that tell what a noun is like.
Which Noun the Adjective Describes [M]	Match an adjective to the one noun it is telling you about.
Comparing: -er and -est [M]	Use the right form of an adjective to compare two things or many.
What an Adverb Is [M]	Name the words that tell more about what happened.
How, When, Where, How Often [M]	Say which question an adverb is answering.
Adjective or Adverb? [H]	Choose between a describing word and its -ly form.
What a Pronoun Is [M]	Replace a noun with the pronoun that fits its job.
The Noun a Pronoun Stands For [H]	Track a pronoun back to the noun it replaced.
I or Me, He or Him [H]	Pick the right pronoun form even when another person is named too.

Sentence Types, Fragments & Run-Ons · 7 topics

The Four Kinds of Sentence [M]	Tell a statement, question, command, and exclamation apart.
Spotting a Fragment [M]	Tell when a group of words stops before it is a sentence.
Fixing a Fragment [M]	Add what is missing so a fragment becomes a sentence.
Spotting a Run-On [M]	Notice when two sentences have been jammed into one.
Three Ways to Fix a Run-On [H]	Repair a run-on, and choose the repair that fits the meaning.
Joining Two Sentences [H]	Combine short sentences with the joining word the meaning needs.
Sentence, Fragment, or Run-On? [H]	Sort any group of words into complete, too short, or too long.

Verb Tenses & Subject-Verb Agreement · 8 topics

Past, Present, or Future? [M]	Tell from the verb whether a sentence is about the past, the present, or the future.
Building the Past Tense with -ed [H]	Add -ed to a verb and make the spelling changes the ending forces.
Verbs That Do Not Take -ed [H]	Use the past tense of the irregular verbs, and keep it apart from the participle.
Actions Caught in the Middle [H]	Use am, is, are, was, were and will be with an -ing verb to show an action in progress.
Have, Has and Had [H]	Use have, has and had with a past participle, and say what had adds.
Keeping the Tense Steady [H]	Notice a sentence that slips into a different tense and put it back.
Making the Verb Match Its Subject [H]	Match a present-tense verb, including am, is and are, to its subject.
Subjects That Trick You [H]	Find the real subject when a phrase, a group word or a There sentence hides it.

Commas, Quotation Marks & Apostrophes · 9 topics

Commas in a List [M]	Separate three or more items in a sentence with commas.
The Comma After an Opener [M]	Close off a word or phrase that comes before the main sentence.
The Comma Before and, but, or, so [H]	Use a comma when a joining word connects two whole sentences.
Commas Around the Person You Are Talking To [H]	Set off the name of the person being spoken to.
Commas in Dates, Places, and Letters [H]	Punctuate a full date, a city and state, and the lines of a letter.
Quotation Marks Around What Someone Says [H]	Punctuate a spoken line and the words that tell who said it.
Apostrophes in Contractions [M]	Put the apostrophe exactly where the missing letters were.
Apostrophes That Show Ownership [H]	Show who owns something with 's or s'.
its, it's, and the Plural That Needs No Apostrophe [H]	Choose between look-alike words that an apostrophe tells apart.

Conjunctions, Prepositions & Complex Sentences · 9 topics

Clause, or Just a Phrase? [H]	Tell an independent clause, a dependent clause, and a phrase apart.
Prepositions and the Phrases They Start [H]	Find a prepositional phrase and say where it starts and stops.
The Subject Is Never Inside the Phrase [H]	Ignore the prepositional phrase and match the verb to the real subject.
All Seven Coordinating Conjunctions [H]	Choose among the seven - and, but, or, so, for, nor, and yet - by what each one claims.
The Comma Before a Joining Word [H]	When a joining word holds two halves together, the comma goes in only if a whole sentence follows it.
Subordinating Conjunctions [H]	Use because, although, unless, until, and their kin to say how two ideas relate.
Where the Comma Goes in a Complex Sentence [H]	Comma after a leading dependent clause, none after a trailing one.
Conjunctions That Come in Pairs [H]	Use both...and, either...or, neither...nor, and not only...but also, with matching halves.
Simple, Compound, Complex [H]	Name the structure of any sentence by counting its clauses.

Capitalization & Titles · 9 topics

Naming Words and Names [M]	Tell a word that names one particular thing from a word that names a whole group.
Titles That Go With a Name [M]	Capitalize a title or family word when it is part of somebody's name.
Place Names and Directions [M]	Capitalize the name of a particular place, but not a kind of place or a direction.
Days, Months, and Holidays [M]	Capitalize days, months, and holidays - and leave the seasons alone.
Languages, Peoples, and School Subjects [H]	Capitalize languages, countries, and the people from them, but not school subjects.
Capitals Inside Quotation Marks [H]	Capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence, and know when the second half does not get one.
Which Words in a Title Get a Capital [H]	Capitalize the first word, the last word, and every important word in a title.
Quotation Marks or Italics [H]	Choose quotation marks for a piece of a work and italics for a whole work.
Every Capital Rule at Once [H]	Check a whole sentence and name the rule behind each capital letter.

Spelling Patterns & Rules · 9 topics

Doubling at the End of a Short Word [M]	Double a final f, l, s or z after one short vowel.
Spelling /k/ at the End: ck, k or ke [M]	Choose ck, k or ke for the /k/ sound at the end of a word.
The Extra Letter a Short Vowel Asks For [M]	Write tch and dge after a short vowel, ch and ge everywhere else.
Same Sound, Different Place in the Word [M]	Use ai and oi inside a word, and ay, oy and y at the end.
Letters You Cannot Hear [H]	Spell words that keep a letter nobody says.
ie or ei [H]	Choose between ie and ei using the sound and the letter before it.
The /shun/ Ending: -tion, -sion or -cian [H]	Choose between -tion, -sion, -ssion and -cian at the end of a word.
The Vowel You Cannot Hear [H]	Find an unstressed vowel by saying a related word out loud.
Catching It and Naming the Rule [H]	Find the misspelled word in a sentence and say which rule fixes it.

Writing Strong Sentences · 7 topics

Knowing When You Have a Sentence [M]	Tell a finished sentence from a piece of one.
Saying More Than the Bare Fact [M]	Add detail that answers a question a reader would ask.
Verbs That Do the Work [M]	Choose a verb precise enough to replace a description.
Naming the Thing Exactly [M]	Replace a category word with the actual thing.
Joining Two Sentences [M]	Put two related sentences together without making a run-on.
Choosing the Right Joining Word [M]	Pick the joining word that states the real relationship.
Changing How a Sentence Starts [H]	Notice a repeated opening and rewrite one to break it.

Paragraphs & Topic Sentences · 7 topics

The Sentence the Others Are About [H]	Find or choose the sentence a paragraph is built on.
The Sentence That Does Not Belong [H]	Spot a sentence that wanders off the paragraph's point.
Naming Why It Does Not Fit [H]	Say what is wrong with an off-point sentence, not just which it is.
Details That Actually Support [H]	Choose detail that backs the claim you made.
Ending Without Adding [H]	Close a paragraph by landing the point, not opening a new one.
Linking Words Between Sentences [H]	Use a transition that states the real relationship.
Where One Paragraph Ends [H]	Find the point where a new idea starts and split there.

Opinion & Argument Writing · 7 topics

A Claim or a Fact? [H]	Tell a position someone could argue with from a fact they could check.
The Reason Under a Claim [H]	Find the sentence that says why a position holds.
A Reason That Just Says It Again [H]	Spot a reason that goes in a circle instead of forward.
Evidence That Actually Proves It [H]	Tell measured evidence from a stronger way of repeating an opinion.
Claims You Cannot Defend [H]	Recognize a claim pushed past what any evidence could support.
Answering the Other Side [H]	Answer the strongest objection instead of talking past it.
The Shape of an Argument [H]	Name the job each sentence in an argument is doing.

Informative & Explanatory Writing · 8 topics

Explaining or Arguing? [H]	Tell a sentence that explains from one that argues, tells a story, or gives orders.
Saying What You Will Explain [H]	Open a report with a sentence that says what about the subject will be explained.
Putting Facts Where They Belong [H]	Group related facts under the heading that answers the same question.
Sentences That Add Something [H]	Develop a point with real information instead of repeating it louder.
Defining a Word for Your Reader [H]	Write a definition that names the kind of thing and what sets it apart.
The Exact Word [H]	Use the subject's own word instead of describing your way around it.
Sounding Like a Report [H]	Keep the writer, the reader, and casual talk out of an explanation.
Your Own Words, the Same Facts [H]	Restate a source's fact in your own wording without changing it.

Narrative Writing · 9 topics

Starting Where the Story Starts [M]	Begin a story inside the moment instead of outside it.
Telling It in an Order a Reader Can Follow [H]	Keep events in order and mark the jumps with real time signposts.
Showing a Feeling Instead of Naming It [H]	Replace a named feeling with something a reader can watch.
The Detail That Earns Its Place [H]	Choose details that do a job instead of filling space.
Dialogue That Does a Job [H]	Keep the lines that change something and cut the ones that do not.
Slowing Down the Part That Matters [H]	Spend sentences in proportion to what a moment is worth.
One Narrator, One Time [H]	Hold a story in the same tense and the same person all the way through.
An Ending That Lands [H]	End by showing what is different now.
The Shape of a Story [H]	Name the job each sentence in a story is doing.

Revising & Editing · 9 topics

Revising and Editing Are Different Jobs [M]	Tell a change that fixes what a piece says from one that fixes how it is written.
Cutting Words That Do No Work [H]	Cut the words that repeat something the sentence has already said.
Pronouns That Point at Nothing [H]	Find a pronoun a reader cannot trace back and rewrite it so they can.
The Sentence in the Wrong Place [H]	Find the sentence a reader meets before they can understand it.
Where the Describing Words Landed [H]	Put a describing phrase next to the thing it is supposed to describe.
Lists That Match [H]	Build every item in a list out of the same kind of phrase.
Tense That Slips [H]	Keep a whole piece in one tense, and put a slipped sentence back.
What a Spellchecker Cannot Catch [H]	Catch a correctly spelled word that is the wrong word.
Finding the Error and Naming It [H]	Find the one error in a sentence, name what kind it is, and fix just that.

Research & Reference Skills · 9 topics

A Question Worth Researching [M]	Turn a subject into a question that sources can actually settle.
The Words Worth Searching [H]	Pull the searchable words out of a research question.
Choosing the Right Reference Work [H]	Match a research need to the reference work built to answer it.
Finding It Inside the Book [H]	Use contents, index, glossary and title page for what each is for.
Guide Words and Alphabetical Order [H]	Use guide words to decide whether a word is on a page.
Does This Source Answer My Question? [H]	Tell a source that answers your question from one that merely shares it.
Who Wrote It, and Why [H]	Weigh a source by its author, its date and its purpose.
Notes in Your Own Words [H]	Take a note that carries the idea without carrying the sentence.
Naming Where It Came From [H]	Record a source completely enough that a reader could find it.

Reading Fluency & Prosody · 8 topics

What the End Mark Tells Your Voice [M]	Read a line the way its end mark says to read it.
Reading in Groups, Not One Word at a Time [M]	Group the words in a line the way they belong before you read it aloud.
Where the Marks Say Pause [M]	Pause where a comma is and stop where an end mark is, and nowhere else.
The Word You Lean On [H]	Choose which word to stress, and know what stressing it tells a listener.
Reading a Character's Voice [H]	Say only the quoted words in the character's voice, the way the tag says.
A Line Is Not a Sentence [H]	Read a poem by its punctuation instead of stopping at every line break.
Catching Yourself and Going Back [H]	Notice when what you read stopped making sense, and find the word to fix.
What Smooth Reading Is Made Of [H]	Name the five parts of fluent reading and tell which one a reader missed.

Kindergarten Reading Workshop · 8 topics

The Answer Is Right There [M]	Find the words in the text that answer the question.
What the Whole Thing Is About [M]	Say what a whole text is about, not just what one part of it says.
Which Question Does It Answer? [M]	Tell which questions a text can answer and which ones it cannot.
First, Next, Last [M]	Put the events or the steps of a text in the order they happen.
Who, Where, and How They Feel [M]	Name who a story is about, where it happens, and how the people feel.
Saying Why It Happened [M]	Give the reason something happened, using what the text says.
A Word You Can Work Out [M]	Work out what a new word means from the sentences around it.
Alike and Different [H]	Tell how two things in a text are alike and how they are different.

Grade 1 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

Who It Is About, Where, and When [M]	Name the person a text follows, the place it happens, and the time - even when the text never says them out loud.
What Happened First, Next, and Last [M]	Keep events in the order they happened, even when the text mentions them in a different order.
The Problem and How It Gets Fixed [M]	Name what is standing in a character's way, and name what finally moves it.
How Someone Feels, and How You Know [M]	Name a character's feeling from what the text shows, and notice when the feeling changes.
What the Whole Text Is About [M]	Say what a whole text is about instead of naming one detail from inside it.
Key Details, and the One That Proves It [M]	Go back and find the small fact a question asks for, then learn to pick the part of a text that proves a claim.
Why It Happened, and Why the Writer Said It [H]	Give the reason something happened, say why the writer put a part in, and use a reason the text gave you on a case it never mentioned.
A New Word or Phrase You Can Work Out [H]	Work out an unknown word - or a whole phrase - from the sentences around it instead of stopping.

Grade 2 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How [M]	Answer a question about any text by going back and finding what the text actually says - even when it never says it in so many words.
Order, Steps, and What Made It Happen [M]	Keep events, steps and reasons hooked together in the right order, even when the text mentions them out of order.
What a Character Does About It [M]	Name how a character feels, and then name what the character actually does about it.
The Lesson a Story Teaches [M]	Say the lesson a story, folktale, poem or play is teaching, instead of retelling what happened in it.
The Main Topic, and What Each Part Adds [M]	Say what a whole true text is about, and say what one part of it is doing inside that whole.
Working Out a New Word or Phrase [H]	Use the sentences around an unknown word - or a whole phrase - to work out what it means, instead of stopping.
Why the Author Wrote It [H]	Name the job an author gave a text - to explain, to show how, to tell what really happened, or to talk you into something - and find the reasons an author gives.
Whose Voice Is This? [H]	Say who is telling a text, and see how two people can watch the same thing and describe it two different ways.

Grade 3 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

What the Whole Text Is About [M]	Say what a whole text is about, in any genre, instead of naming one striking detail from inside it.
The Detail That Proves It [M]	Go back and find the exact detail a question asks for, and pick the one piece of a text that actually proves a given claim.
Order, and Why It Happened [M]	Keep events in the order they really happened, and give the reason something happened using the text.
People on the Page [M]	Name what a character or speaker is like, how they feel, and how they change, using what the text shows rather than what it says outright.
The Lesson a Text Leaves You With [H]	State the message or lesson of a story, folktale, poem, play or life as a sentence about people, not as a one-word topic.
Words and Phrases You Can Work Out [H]	Work out an unfamiliar word from the sentences around it, and tell when a phrase does not mean what its words say.
Reading Between the Lines [H]	Answer a question the text never answers outright, using a clue from the page plus what you already know.
Why the Writer Wrote It That Way [H]	Name why a writer made a text, and why a particular part of it is there at all.

Grade 4 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

What the Whole Text Says [H]	State what a whole text says about its topic, in any genre, and tell a main idea apart from a striking detail.
The Detail, and the Line That Proves It [H]	Go back and find the exact detail a question asks for, and choose the one line in a text that actually proves a given claim.
How the Text Is Put Together [H]	Name the shape a text is built in, and say what a paragraph, a stanza or a stage direction is doing where it sits.
Working Out a Word, Plain or Not [H]	Work out what a word or phrase means from the text around it, including words that are not meant literally and words with a second meaning.
What the Text Does Not Say Outright [H]	Draw a conclusion the text supports but never states, and know where the text stops supporting you.
People, and What Changes Them [H]	Describe a character in depth from what they do, say and choose, and say what the setting or an event does to them.
The Message Under the Story [H]	State the message of a story, folktale, poem or scene as a sentence about life that the whole text supports.
Whose Account, and Why It Was Written [H]	Work out who is telling a text, whether the account is firsthand or secondhand, and what the writer wanted from you.

Grade 5 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

The Point, and How to Say It Short [H]	State what a whole text is saying about its topic, and summarize it without losing the point or adding your opinion.
The Line You Would Point At [H]	Pick the exact detail that settles a claim, rather than a detail that is merely true.
What the Text Made True Without Saying It [H]	Answer a question the text never answers outright, using a clue on the page plus what you already know - and stop where the clue stops.
The Shape of the Thing [H]	Name how a text is put together, and explain why a writer chose that shape and that order.
What the Whole Thing Says About People [H]	State the theme or message of a text as a sentence about people, and check it against the ending.
Who Is Telling You This [H]	Work out whose account you are reading, what that lets them know, and whose view is missing from the page.
Working Out a Word on the Page [H]	Use the sentences around a word to settle its meaning, including figurative phrases and ordinary words used in a special way.
Claims, Reasons, and Whether the Evidence Reaches [H]	Separate a writer's claim from the reasons under it, judge whether the evidence reaches that far, and name what the writer wanted the reader to do.

Grade 6 Reading Workshop · 8 topics

The Idea the Whole Text Is Serving [H]	Name what a whole text is saying about its topic, and write a summary that keeps the point instead of the most memorable facts.
The Line That Settles It [H]	Choose the exact detail that settles a particular claim, rather than a detail that is merely true or merely nearby.
What the Text Made True Without Saying It [H]	Answer a question the text never answers outright, using a line on the page plus what you already know - and stop where the line stops.
What the Whole Thing Says About People [H]	State the theme or message of a text as a sentence about people, and check it against the ending the writer actually chose.
Why That Part Is in That Place [H]	Name how a text is put together, and explain what a particular paragraph or stanza is doing where the writer put it.
Whose Account Is This [H]	Work out whose account you are reading, what it lets them know, what it makes them want you to think, and whose view is missing.
A Word Inside Its Sentence [H]	Settle what a word or phrase means from the sentences around it, including figures of speech and ordinary words doing a special job.
Claim, Reason, and How Far the Evidence Reaches [H]	Trace a writer's claim to the reasons and evidence under it, and judge whether the evidence reaches as far as the claim does.

Grade 7 Reading & Language · 9 topics

The Idea the Whole Thing Is Built Around [H]	State what a whole text is about when it never says so, and write a summary that keeps its point instead of its most memorable fact.
The Line You Would Put Your Finger On [H]	Pick the one detail that settles a particular claim, and say why the other true details do not reach it.
What the Text Made True Without Printing It [H]	Build an answer the writer never wrote, from a clue on the page plus what you know - and stop exactly where the clue stops.
The Shape, and the Job of Each Part [H]	Name how a text is built, and explain what one paragraph is doing where it sits.
What the Whole Thing Says About People [H]	State a text's theme as a sentence about people, and check it against the ending the writer actually chose.
Who Is Telling You This, and Who Is Not [H]	Work out whose account you are reading, what it lets them know, what it keeps them from admitting, and whose view never appears.
Word Choice, and What It Is Doing to You [H]	Settle a word's meaning from the sentences around it, and name what a writer's particular choice of word is doing to the reader.
Claims, Reasons, and How Far the Evidence Reaches [H]	Separate a claim from its reasons and its evidence, and judge whether the evidence actually reaches as far as the claim goes.
Two Accounts of the Same Thing [H]	Compare what two texts on one subject emphasize, where they genuinely conflict, and what each kind of source can and cannot tell you.

Grade 8 Reading & Language · 9 topics

The One Thing It Is All Serving [H]	State the idea a whole text is built to serve when it is never printed, and write a summary that carries the point instead of the best detail.
The Line You Would Put Your Finger On [H]	Pick the one detail that settles a particular claim, and say why the other true details do not reach it.
What the Text Made True Without Printing It [H]	Build an answer the writer never wrote, from clues on the page plus what you know, and stop exactly where the clues stop.
The Shape, and the Job of One Part [H]	Name how a text is built, and explain what one paragraph, line or stage direction is doing in the place where it sits.
What the Whole Thing Says About People [H]	State a text's theme as a sentence about people, and check it against the ending the writer actually chose.
What You Know That They Do Not [H]	Track the gap between what you have been told and what a person inside the text knows, in stories and in true accounts alike.
Word Choice, and What It Is Doing to You [H]	Settle a word's meaning from the sentences around it, and name what the writer's particular choice of word is doing to the reader.
How Far the Evidence Actually Reaches [H]	Separate a claim from its reasons and evidence, judge whether the evidence reaches as far as the claim goes, and spot a piece that does not belong at all.
When Two Accounts Do Not Agree [H]	Work out whether two texts on one subject disagree about a fact, about an interpretation, or about nothing at all.

Close Reading & Annotation · 9 topics

Say It Straight First [H]	Restate a difficult passage accurately before you interpret it.
The Weight of One Word [H]	Ask why the writer chose this word and not the nearest alternative.
What the Sentence Shape Does [H]	Read the structure of a sentence as part of what it means.
The Image That Carries It [H]	Read a concrete detail or comparison for the abstract work it is doing.
Where the Tone Turns [H]	Name a text's attitude toward its subject, and find where it changes.
What the Text Will Not Say [H]	Draw a conclusion the words on the page require but never state.
The Line That Actually Proves It [H]	Choose the quotation that supports your claim, not the one nearest it.
Reading With a Pencil [H]	Mark a text so the second pass starts where the first one ended.
Where the Reading Stops [H]	Tell a reading the text supports from one you have supplied yourself.

Characterization & Complexity · 8 topics

What a Character Does Instead of Saying [H]	Read a character from conduct, from how other people behave around them, and from what nobody says out loud.
The Reason a Character Will Not Give [H]	Work out what a character actually wants when the reason they offer is not the reason they have.
The Distance Between the Telling and the Told [H]	Measure the distance between what a narrator claims and what the same text shows.
The Object That Does the Work [H]	Read the object, gesture or image that carries what the sentence refuses to state.
Voice as Evidence [H]	Use word choice, sentence shape and sentence length as evidence about the person speaking.
Set Against Each Other [H]	Use one character to see another, without letting the contrast turn into a verdict.
Characters Who Do Not Add Up [H]	Hold two true and incompatible things about one character at the same time instead of choosing between them.
What Changes, and What It Costs [H]	Locate the turn in a character, and say what the change leaves untouched and what it costs.

Theme, Motif & Central Argument · 8 topics

Stating a Theme as a Claim [H]	Write a theme as a sentence somebody could argue with, not a noun.
The Evidence a Theme Rests On [H]	Support a claim about theme with the detail that would break it if removed.
Motif: What Keeps Coming Back [H]	Track a repeating image or word, then say what changes between its first appearance and its last.
When an Object Starts Carrying the Meaning [H]	Read a symbol by the gap between what an object does and what the text keeps it for.
The Central Argument of a Nonfiction Text [H]	Name the one thing a writer wants conceded, as distinct from the subject.
Concession, Rebuttal, and What They Cost [H]	Tell a granted point from a denied one, and say what the writer bought with it.
Two Readings, One Text [H]	Say what a text settles, what it declines to settle, and which reading the evidence rules out.
How a Theme Gets Built [H]	Follow an idea from its first appearance through the place it is complicated to its last.

Narrative Structure, Pacing & Frame · 8 topics

The Shape of the Whole [H]	Name how a narrative is arranged, separately from what happens in it.
Story Time and Telling Time [H]	Separate the order events happened in from the order the text reveals them.
Where the Story Turns [H]	Find the hinge - the point after which the same events mean something else.
Scene, Summary, and the Skipped Year [H]	Read the ratio between page time and story time as a statement of emphasis.
What the Structure Withholds [H]	Treat a missing piece as a shaped choice rather than an accident.
The Story Inside the Story [H]	Read the outer situation that contains a telling, not only the telling.
Strands Set Against Each Other [H]	Read the seam between two strands, where the writer has left the connection out.
How an Ending Works [H]	Judge an ending by what it does to the text behind it, not by what it settles.

Poetry: Form, Meter & Sound · 8 topics

Where the Line Stops [H]	Read a line break as a decision, and say what the break is doing.
The Shape the Poem Agreed To [H]	Identify a poem's form and say what obeying it costs and buys.
Counting the Beat, and What Breaks It [H]	Hear a poem's metrical pattern and read the places where it departs.
Rhyme, Near Rhyme and What They Yoke [H]	Read a rhyme scheme, hear a near rhyme, and say what the pairing does.
What the Sound Is Doing [H]	Name a sound pattern in a line and say what it does to the reading.
The Line That Comes Back [H]	Read a repeated line for what has changed around it.
The Image That Carries the Argument [H]	Read a concrete detail for the claim it is making without stating it.
The Voice and What It Will Not Say [H]	Identify a poem's speaker and read the gap between what is said and known.

Shakespeare & Dramatic Language · 8 topics

Verse, Prose, and the Moment of the Switch [H]	Read the register a character is speaking in, and read what a change of register means.
Soliloquy and Aside [H]	Read a character thinking alone, and treat that thinking as an argument rather than a confession.
The Stage Directions Inside the Dialogue [H]	Reconstruct what happens physically on stage from the lines themselves.
Quibbles: One Word Doing Two Jobs [H]	Read a pun as an argument being made, not as a joke interrupting one.
Image Patterns and What They Argue [H]	Follow an image across a scene and say what claim it is quietly making.
What the Line Does Not Say [H]	Read the meaning a character conveys by refusing to state it.
What the Audience Knows [H]	Track the gap between what the audience knows and what a character knows, and say what the gap does to a line.
Persuasion in Front of an Audience [H]	Analyze a stage speech as a set of moves aimed at the people standing there.

Literary Movements & Historical Context · 8 topics

Reading the Period Off the Page [H]	Name the period habits a text is using from the writing itself, without being told the label.
Evidence for a Claim About a Text [H]	Test a claim about a text against the detail that would actually settle it.
Form Carries the History [H]	Explain what a technical choice about narration asserts about what can be known.
The Moment That Made the Text [H]	Connect what a text worries about to the conditions it was written in - and say how far the connection reaches.
Movements Answer Other Movements [H]	Identify what a text is refusing, and read the refusal as part of its argument.
One Subject, Two Periods [H]	Compare two treatments of the same material and locate exactly where the periods part.
Reading a Text Forward, Not Backward [H]	Keep a later fact, a later word, or a later verdict from being smuggled into a reading.
Who Gets Counted In [H]	Ask how a movement's roster was assembled, and what a roster can and cannot measure.

Irony, Satire & Ambiguity · 8 topics

Verbal Irony: Words Against Meaning [H]	Detect a speaker who means something other than what the words say, and name what the gap is doing.
Situational Irony: Aim Against Outcome [H]	Tell an ironic outcome from a merely unfortunate one by testing it against the aim that produced it.
Dramatic Irony: What the Audience Carries [H]	Track what a reader knows that a character does not, and say what the gap does to the lines that follow.
The Gap Between a Speaker and the Text [H]	Measure the distance between what a speaker claims about himself and what the text puts on the page - including when the distance is zero.
Satire: Finding the Target [H]	Separate what a satire pretends to be from what it wants you to think worse of.
How Satire Works on a Reader [H]	Name the technique a satire is using and say what it buys that a plain complaint could not.
Is It Irony at All? [H]	Decide whether a text is ironic by naming the gap, rather than by how the text makes you feel.
Ambiguity: What a Text Refuses to Settle [H]	Say what a text settles, what it deliberately leaves open, and which readings its evidence rules out.

The Rhetorical Situation · 8 topics

Exigence: What Made This Necessary [H]	Identify the pressure that called a text into being, and separate it from the occasion.
The Audience Under the Audience [H]	Tell apart who a text is addressed to, who it is written for, and who is meant to overhear it.
The Speaker Is a Construction [H]	Describe the version of a writer that a text builds, and why that version fits the situation.
Stated Purpose and Working Purpose [H]	Separate what a text says it is doing from the job it is actually built to do.
What the Writer Was Not Free to Say [H]	Find the limits a situation places on a text, and read what those limits shaped.
Kairos: Why Now [H]	Judge how a text's timing changes what it can accomplish.
The Shape the Medium Demands [H]	Explain how the form a text is delivered in changes what it can and cannot do.
When a Text Changes Situations [H]	Track what happens to a text's meaning when it is carried out of the situation it was written for.

Rhetorical Appeals & Strategies · 8 topics

Ethos: The Credit a Text Builds [H]	Identify how a text earns, spends or refuses the reader's trust.
Pathos: Feeling Put to Work [H]	Explain how a text produces feeling, and what the feeling is being asked to do.
Logos: The Part That Survives Dislike [H]	Test the reasoning and evidence in an argument on its own terms.
Which Appeal Is Carrying the Weight [H]	Decide which appeal a move depends on when a move is doing more than one thing.
Giving Ground on Purpose [H]	Analyze a concession as a trade: what was surrendered, and what it bought.
Word Choice as Strategy [H]	Explain what a chosen word does that its plainest alternative would not.
Arrangement, Repetition and the Short Sentence [H]	Show how sentence shape and order do persuasive work that the words alone do not.
Would This Move Land on This Reader [H]	Judge a strategy against the audience it was aimed at, including what it risks.

Argument: Claim, Evidence & Reasoning · 8 topics

Finding the Claim [H]	Locate the exact proposition an argument is asking you to accept.
What the Evidence Can Carry [H]	Judge evidence by relevance, sufficiency and where it came from, not by how impressive it sounds.
The Reasoning in Between [H]	Name the unwritten step that connects a piece of evidence to the claim it is offered for.
What the Argument Is Standing On [H]	Surface the unstated premise an argument needs, and test what happens if it fails.
Concession, Rebuttal, and the Difference [H]	Tell apart granting a point, answering it, and refusing to engage with it.
Where the Reasoning Breaks [H]	Name what has gone wrong in a piece of reasoning, precisely enough to say what would fix it.
How Far the Claim Reaches [H]	Match the size of a claim to the size of the evidence behind it.
What Would Settle It [H]	Compare two arguments by asking what evidence would decide between them.

Logical Fallacies & Flawed Reasoning · 9 topics

Attacking the Arguer [H]	Separate an attack on the person from a fair reason to check their evidence.
The Position Nobody Took [H]	Tell a reply that answers the stated position from one that answers an invented version of it.
After Is Not Because [H]	Test a causal claim against timing, confounding and the direction of the arrow.
The Sample That Chose Itself [H]	Judge a generalization by how its cases were gathered, not by how many there are.
Only Two Doors [H]	Tell a manufactured either/or from a choice that really does come down to two.
The Chain With No Links [H]	Test a chain of predicted consequences link by link for the mechanism that would carry it.
Borrowed Authority [H]	Weigh an appeal to expertise, numbers or tradition by what the source actually examined.
The Word That Changed Sides [H]	Track a key word through an argument and catch it changing meaning partway.
Naming the Flaw [H]	Say precisely which defect an argument has - and say when it has none.

Synthesis: Sources in Conversation · 8 topics

The Question the Sources Are Arguing About [H]	State the proposition a set of sources is actually at issue over, and what each one is answering.
How One Source Stands to Another [H]	Describe the relation between two sources more precisely than agree or disagree.
Comparing Like with Like [H]	Test whether two pieces of evidence are about the same object, population, period and definition before setting them side by side.
Real Conflict and Apparent Conflict [H]	Tell a genuine contradiction from two sources measuring different things, and locate where a real one would have to live.
Putting a Source to Work [H]	Use a source inside your own argument instead of summarizing it in turn.
What a Source Can Be Cited For [H]	Match the claim you make to what the source actually measured.
Staking a Position the Sources Support [H]	Write a thesis that is neither a summary of the sources nor a refusal to choose between them.
What the Set Cannot Settle [H]	Name the question a source set leaves open and the evidence that would close it.

Media Literacy & Source Credibility · 8 topics

Who Made This, and What Were They Rewarded For [H]	Judge a source by its expertise, its incentives and what it discloses - without treating an interest as a verdict.
Checking a Source by Leaving It [H]	Verify a claim from outside the page that makes it, using independent records rather than the page's own account of itself.
Following a Claim Back to Its Origin [H]	Trace a reported finding through each retelling to the document it started in, and name what changed on the way.
The Frame Around the Facts [H]	Analyze how headline, emphasis, order and image shape a reader's conclusion without any sentence being false.
Numbers That Are True and Misleading [H]	Interrogate a statistic for its denominator, its base rate, its measurement and how its sample was drawn.
Does the Evidence Reach the Conclusion [H]	Test whether the evidence offered actually supports the claim made, and name what would count against it.
Why This Reached You [H]	Explain how ranking, sharing and timing decide what you see, and why a feed cannot measure how common a view is.
Is the Evidence What It Claims to Be [H]	Test whether an image, clip or recording is genuine and correctly placed - and say so when the answer is that you cannot tell.

Diction, Tone & Connotation · 8 topics

Same Fact, Different Verdict [H]	Choose the word that carries the verdict you want without changing the claim you are making.
How Strong Is Too Strong [H]	Pick the rung of a word ladder the evidence actually supports.
Where the Judgment Is Hiding [H]	Find the word that is arguing inside a sentence of facts, and take it out without losing anything.
Softening It and Sharpening It [H]	Tell a euphemism from a plain statement, and a strong true sentence from one that overclaims.
The Level of the Diction [H]	Match the level of your words to the occasion, and tell inflated diction from necessary technical language.
Naming a Tone Precisely [H]	Name a writer's attitude with the word the evidence supports, not the nearest feeling.
Where the Tone Turns [H]	Locate the sentence where a writer's attitude changes, with or without a signal word.
What the Word Choices Add Up To [H]	Read a writer's position out of an accumulation of choices he never states as an opinion.

Syntax & Sentence Style · 8 topics

Which Clause the Reader Believes [H]	Put the fact you are asserting in the main clause and the fact you are conceding in the subordinate one.
Items That Have to Match [H]	Keep every item in a series - and every half of a not only / but also pair - in the same grammatical form.
The Phrase That Grabs the Wrong Subject [H]	Check what an opening phrase actually attaches to, and repair it without changing who did what.
What a Limiting Word Limits [H]	Place only, just and even where they belong, and pin a modifier that could belong to either side of it.
Adding Detail Without Adding a Sentence [H]	Name and build the four free modifiers: appositive, participial phrase, relative clause and absolute phrase.
Semicolon, Colon, Dash [H]	Choose the mark the joint between two clauses actually calls for, and keep a comma-heavy list readable.
Active, Passive, and the Missing Actor [H]	Identify the passive, name what it leaves out, and tell when leaving the actor out is the honest choice.
Where the Main Clause Falls [H]	Tell a periodic sentence from a cumulative one, and rebuild either into the other without changing what it reports.

Academic Vocabulary (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What the Parts Can and Cannot Tell You [H]	Narrow an unfamiliar academic word with its parts, then let the sentence choose.
Words That Are Not Interchangeable [H]	Hold apart two academic words that look almost the same and claim different things.
When an Ordinary Word Is a Technical Term [H]	Read a familiar word in the exact sense its field gives it, and restate it without smuggling the everyday sense back in.
The Phrases Academic Prose Is Built From [H]	Choose the verb that a fixed academic phrase actually takes.
The Word That Names the Logical Move [H]	Pick the connective that states the exact relation between two claims.
Saying What a Source Did [H]	Characterize another writer's move with a verb that claims exactly what she claimed.
Exactly How Much Is Being Claimed [H]	Choose the wording that claims precisely what a record supports, and name the fault when a claim outruns it.
What an Assignment Verb Demands [H]	Name the move a high school or college prompt is asking for before you start writing.

The Argumentative Essay · 8 topics

The Thesis Somebody Could Refuse [H]	Write a thesis that is arguable, specific, and binding on the essay that follows.
The Order of the Reasons [H]	Arrange an argument so each paragraph makes the next one possible.
What a Body Paragraph Owes [H]	Open a paragraph with a claim it can finish, and keep the paragraph to that claim.
Putting Evidence Into a Sentence [H]	Choose, frame and attribute evidence so a reader knows where it came from and what it is for.
The Sentences After the Evidence [H]	Write the reasoning that turns a piece of evidence into support for your claim.
Where the Other Side Goes [H]	Place, state and answer an objection so the reader's own doubt is dealt with.
The Seam Between Paragraphs [H]	Join paragraphs by naming the relationship between them, not by announcing that another one is coming.
Openings and Endings That Earn Their Space [H]	Open with the situation the argument is answering, and close with something the reader did not already have.

The Rhetorical Analysis Essay · 8 topics

The Analytical Thesis [H]	Write a thesis that claims how a text works, not what it contains.
From Choice to Effect [H]	Say what a rhetorical choice does, not merely that it was made.
Summary Is Not Analysis [H]	Tell the difference between retelling a source and claiming something about it.
Choosing and Framing the Quotation [H]	Pick the words the claim turns on, and frame them so they do work.
The Line of Reasoning [H]	Order body paragraphs so each claim is made possible by the one before it.
Grounding the Analysis in Its Occasion [H]	Tie every claim about effect to a real audience, occasion and exigence.
Verbs, Hedges and the Analyst's Voice [H]	Choose verbs that carry a claim, and claim only what the text supports.
Revising a Rhetorical Analysis [H]	Diagnose a draft's structure before polishing any of its sentences.

Research, Citation & Academic Integrity · 8 topics

The Question a Search Can Finish [H]	Turn a topic into a research question that names what would count as an answer.
The Source That Can Answer This Claim [H]	Match a claim to the kind of record that could contain it, rather than to a general ranking of sources.
What This Source Was Built to Know [H]	Interrogate a source by its method and its purpose rather than by whether you like its conclusion.
Paraphrase, Patchwriting and the Line Between [H]	Rebuild a source's idea in your own architecture instead of translating its sentence word by word.
Which Sentences Owe a Citation [H]	Decide what a sentence owes a source by asking what was taken, not by counting matching words.
Saying What the Source Can Support [H]	Report a source so that a reader who could see the whole of it would call your sentence fair.
Reading a Citation Before Reading the Source [H]	Read what an entry and its locator already tell you about a source you have not opened.
Where the Line Actually Is [H]	Reason about an academic integrity case by asking what a reader has been told, not what the writer intended.

AP English Language: Rhetorical Analysis · 8 topics

Exigence: Why Now [H]	Identify the pressure that makes a text worth producing at a particular moment, and what a writer does when there isn't one.
The Speaker the Text Builds [H]	Describe the version of a speaker that a text constructs, and the moves that construct it.
Appeals as Choices, Not Labels [H]	Explain what a particular appeal is doing to a particular audience, without stopping at a name for it.
Where the Argument Puts Things [H]	Explain what the order of a text accomplishes, and what a different order would have cost.
Conceding, Qualifying, Refusing [H]	Track exactly what a writer gives away to the other side, and what the giving buys.
What the Evidence Is Doing [H]	Say what a piece of evidence measures, what claim it is attached to, and where it stops.
The Assumption Holding It Together [H]	Find the premise an argument needs but never defends, and test the argument by attacking it.
Tone, and What Restraint Costs [H]	Name a text's attitude precisely, and read the sentence shapes and omissions that produce it.

AP English Language: Argument & Synthesis · 8 topics

What the Prompt Is Actually Asking [H]	Take an exam prompt apart into the proposition, the reach and the materials before writing a word.
A Position Somebody Could Refuse [H]	Write a thesis an informed reader could disagree with, and qualify by naming a line rather than by hedging.
The Line of Reasoning [H]	Order the paragraphs the way the claim itself requires, so each one is a step the thesis needs.
Evidence, and the Sentence That Uses It [H]	Tell evidence from commentary, and write the sentence that says what the evidence establishes and how far.
Citing a Source for What It Can Carry [H]	Use a document for the claim it can actually support, and notice when it declined to take your side.
Building an Argument Out of a Set [H]	Give a synthesis essay the shape of your argument instead of the shape of the file.
The Concession That Costs Something [H]	Grant a real point and then show why you can still pay for it, on the objection's own subject.
Complexity, and the Ways It Is Faked [H]	Earn a sophisticated argument by doing something, not by sounding like somebody who has.

AP English Literature: Prose Fiction Analysis · 8 topics

Whose Words Are on the Page [H]	Track how close the narration stands to a character, and catch the moments it borrows that character's own language.
The Detail That Was Chosen [H]	Explain why one specific object, gesture or number is in the passage when a hundred others were available.
What the Sentence Is Shaped Like [H]	Read sentence length, fragments, and the way clauses are joined as part of the meaning rather than as decoration.
What the Comparison Actually Claims [H]	Take a metaphor or simile apart and state the specific claim it is making, including where the comparison stops working.
Where the Passage Turns [H]	Locate the pivot in an excerpt and say what changes across it - in knowledge, in tone, or in who is in control.
Two True Things at Once [H]	Hold a character's contradictions together instead of resolving them into a single label.
A Claim the Passage Will Bear [H]	Tell a defensible interpretive claim from a plot summary on one side and an invention on the other.
The Line That Has to Hold It Up [H]	Choose the evidence that actually bears the weight of a claim, and recognize when a quotation only looks relevant.

AP English Literature: Poetry Analysis · 8 topics

The Speaker and the Situation [H]	Reconstruct who is speaking in a poem, to whom, from what position, and what has just happened to put them there.
Imagery as Evidence [H]	Read a concrete image as the evidence a poem offers, rather than translating it into an abstraction.
What a Figure Commits To [H]	Explain what a metaphor, personification or direct address makes true in a poem, and what it costs, instead of naming the device.
Diction, Connotation and Register [H]	Trace a word back to the world it comes from, and say what importing that world does to the poem.
Tone and the Turn [H]	Name a poem's attitude in terms complex enough to be true, and locate the point where it changes.
Form, Line and Syntax [H]	Explain what a line break, a stanza shape, a sentence length or a fixed form does that prose could not do.
Ambiguity: What a Poem Will Not Settle [H]	Distinguish real ambiguity, which the text sustains, from vagueness and from a reading a line refutes.
From Reading to Interpretive Claim [H]	Tell a defensible interpretive claim from a summary, a topic, or a generalization the poem itself would refute.

AP English Literature: Literary Argumentation · 8 topics

A Thesis Somebody Could Refuse [H]	Tell a defensible interpretive claim from a summary, an observation, or an assertion the text cannot carry.
What the Question Is Actually Asking [H]	Read a literary argument prompt for the task it sets, not the topic it names.
Evidence That Bears Weight [H]	Choose the line whose best explanation is your claim, and recognize evidence that only looks relevant.
The Sentence After the Quotation [H]	Write the step that carries a quotation to a claim, instead of saying the quotation again.
A Line of Reasoning, Not a List [H]	Order an argument so that each step needs the one before it, and spot a body that only lists.
The Reading That Cuts Against You [H]	Find the strongest rival reading, and answer it with a concession that does not give your claim away.
An Interpretation of the Work as a Whole [H]	Take a claim about one moment and turn it into a claim the whole work has to answer for.
Complexity Without Overreach [H]	Hold two true things at once, size a claim to its evidence, and tell genuine complexity from hedging.

American Literature I: Founding to Civil War · 8 topics

The Speaker a Text Invents [H]	Tell the writer apart from the speaker the writing constructs, and say what that speaker is built to buy.
How the Case Is Built [H]	Follow the moves an argument makes - premise, concession, reframe - without deciding who was right.
Testimony and the Problem of Proof [H]	Work out what a text does to make itself believable, and what that requirement cost the person telling it.
Whose Words Are on the Page [H]	Track the hands a text passed through on its way to you, and say what each of them decided.
What the Narrator Will Not Say [H]	Read a narrator's evasions, denials and repetitions as evidence about what is actually going on.
The Object That Carries the Meaning [H]	State what a recurring object claims, and where the claim stops holding.
Tone, and Where a Text Turns [H]	Name a writer's attitude precisely, and locate the sentence where it changes.
Building a Defensible Reading [H]	Separate a claim the text will bear from a plot summary on one side and an invention on the other.

American Literature II: Realism, Modernism & the Harlem Renaissance · 8 topics

Realism and the Weight of the Ordinary [H]	Read a realist text by asking what its ordinary, checkable details are made to carry.
Naturalism: Force, Chance, and an Indifferent World [H]	Tell a story where the situation does the deciding from one where a person does.
Voice, Dialect, and Who Is Holding the Pen [H]	Work out whose language is on the page and what a way of speaking is being made to do.
What the Modernists Left Out [H]	Read a deliberate silence - what a text could have explained and refuses to.
The Image That Does the Arguing [H]	Read a concrete image as a claim, and notice what a stated moral costs a poem.
Writing to Two Rooms at Once [H]	Read a text written for two audiences that want different things from the same page.
The Narrator Who Will Not Editorialize [H]	Read tone in a text that reports and refuses to judge.
Claims About Periods, and the Evidence for Them [H]	Test a claim that a text belongs to a movement against what the text actually does.

American Literature III: Contemporary & Multicultural Voices · 8 topics

The Word the Text Will Not Explain [H]	Read an unglossed word or reference for what the refusal to explain it says about who the text is written for.
Two Claims on One Person [H]	Read a character who belongs to two places without collapsing the position into confusion or injury.
The Older Voice and the Younger Story [H]	Read the distance between the person who lived an event and the person now telling it.
Why It Is Told in That Order [H]	Read the arrangement of a fragmented or nonlinear text as an argument the text is making.
Carrying a Story You Did Not Live [H]	Read secondhand memory by following the chain of custody and locating where the record stops.
Who the Text Is Talking To [H]	Identify who a text addresses, and read a second-person pronoun for the specific person it is really carrying.
The One Rule the Story Changed [H]	Read a realistic text with one impossible element by watching the register that reports it.
Testing a Label Against the Text [H]	Treat a claim about what kind of book something is as a prediction, and test it against what the text actually does.

British Literature: Medieval to Renaissance · 8 topics

What the Line Is Doing [H]	Read the shape of a text - line, stanza, frame, verse against prose - as part of what it means rather than as the box the meaning came in.
The Word and Where It Came From [H]	Hear a word's register - plain or learned, native or imported - and say what choosing that register does to the sentence around it.
The Figure That Does the Thinking [H]	Read an allegorical figure, an emblem or an extended conceit as an argument being carried out, rather than decoding it into a single word.
The Speaker a Text Builds [H]	Separate the writer from the speaker the writing constructs, and say what that constructed speaker is built to accomplish.
What the Text Knows and the Speaker Does Not [H]	Locate the gap between what a speaker says and what the text lets a reader see, and say who is standing on each side of it.
What the Text Will Not Say [H]	Work out what a text has deliberately left out, and hold the difference between what its silence supports and what it merely permits.
How a Poem Reasons [H]	Trace the case a literary text is making - its premises, its concessions and its turn - without being asked whether you agree with it.
How the Words Reached You [H]	Ask how a text physically got to the page in front of you, and say what that history does to a claim about what the text says.

British Literature: Romantic to Modern · 8 topics

The Voice on the Page Is a Made Thing [H]	Work out who is speaking, to whom, and what they want from being believed.
What the Text Will Not Say [H]	Read the meaning a text carries in its evasions, pauses and unasked-for denials.
The Image That Does the Arguing [H]	Read a figure as a move in an argument rather than as an ornament on one.
Tone, and the Distance a Writer Keeps [H]	Hear the attitude a text takes toward its material and toward you.
Form as an Argument [H]	Explain what a form promises a reader, and what a writer's departure from it means.
A Theme Held Open [H]	State what a text argues about how things are, and then test it on the part that resists.
Movements in Argument With Each Other [H]	Read a text against what it was written to oppose, and ask who wrote the label you are using.
The Line That Settles It [H]	Choose the quotation that separates your reading from the nearest rival reading.

World Literature: Epic & Classical Traditions · 8 topics

The Machinery in Plain Sight [H]	Read a repeated phrase, a fixed opening or a stock scene as equipment a performer needs, and then ask where this writer chose to put it.
The Comparison Brings Its Own World [H]	Read an extended comparison as an argument, asking what world it imports and whose side that world turns out to be on.
What the Culture Is Paying For [H]	Work out what a heroic story treats as the reward, and read the hero as an argument a culture is having with itself.
Two Full Explanations, Both Kept [H]	Hold a divine cause and a human cause in the same event without letting one of them cancel the other.
Where the Poem Puts the Cut [H]	Follow how an epic is arranged - the digression, the ring, the delayed return - and say what the arrangement is for.
The Audience Knows First [H]	Track the gap between what an audience has worked out and what a character still believes, and say what the gap is doing.
Who Is Given a Line [H]	Notice who a victory story lets speak, who it keeps offstage, and what the arrangement is doing.
How the Words Got Here [H]	Ask by what route a text reached you, and what the route did to it, before arguing about what it means.

World Literature in Translation · 8 topics

Every Line Is a Decision [H]	Read a translated sentence as one option that somebody selected, and name what the selection ruled out.
Two Versions, One Original [H]	Compare two renderings of the same text and say precisely what each one bought and what it paid.
The Word That Takes a Paragraph [H]	Name the four things a translator can do with a term that has no English equivalent, and what each one costs.
What Happens to the Shape [H]	Track what a poem's meter, rhyme and repetition do when they meet a language that cannot supply them.
The Voice the Translator Picks [H]	Hear the level of a translated voice - formal or plain, warm or official - and ask what the choice does to the speaker.
What the First Readers Already Knew [H]	Spot the knowledge an original audience brought to a text, and judge how a translation handles a reader who does not have it.
The Apparatus Around the Text [H]	Read the title, cover, introduction and notes as arguments about how the book inside should be taken.
Judging a Translation You Cannot Check [H]	Build an argument about a translation using evidence a reader without the source language actually has.

Mythology, Folklore & Archetype · 8 topics

The Shape You Brought With You [H]	Name the pattern you think you are seeing, then test whether it is in the text or in you.
There Is No Original [H]	Treat the text in front of you as one version among others, and say what that version does differently.
The Room the Story Was Told In [H]	Reconstruct the teller, the listener and the occasion before deciding what a traditional story means.
Motif, Symbol, Archetype [H]	Name the level of the thing you noticed, and say what evidence a claim at that level would need.
What the Story Authorizes [H]	Identify what a myth or tale accounts for in the listener's own world, and what would be unsettled without it.
The Lesson That Arrives from Outside [H]	Separate the lesson printed at the end of a tale from what the tale itself shows, and say who attached it.
What a Change of Body Costs [H]	Read a transformation as an event with consequences, and say what the new form is afterward used for.
Who Is Described and Who Speaks [H]	Count who speaks in their own voice, who is only reported, and who appears in a story without appearing in the record of it.

Creative Writing: Fiction · 8 topics

Scene and Summary [H]	Tell a single dramatized moment from a stretch of time compressed, and find the sentence where one becomes the other.
Showing a State, and Only That State [H]	Write behavior a reader can name one particular feeling from, instead of naming it for them or labeling the gesture you just wrote.
Filter Verbs, and the One That Has to Stay [H]	Cut saw, heard, felt and noticed where they only add distance, and keep them where they are the only thing holding a belief apart from a fact.
What This Narrator Can Know [H]	Hold a story to what its narrator can see, hear or think, and tell a character's inference from the narration's own claim.
Tags, Beats and What Goes Between Them [H]	Punctuate a dialogue tag, an action beat, and a quotation interrupted in the middle by its tag.
Information a Character Would Not Say [H]	Spot the line that exists to inform the reader, and tell it from a line that raises the same history for a reason of its own.
The Detail That Does Two Jobs [H]	Choose the concrete detail a reader can reach the withheld conclusion from, instead of a detail that is merely vivid.
What the Scene Changes [H]	Find the sentence where a scene changes what a character knows, what they can still take back, or what the next scene is able to do.

Creative Writing: Poetry · 9 topics

The Image Instead of the Statement [H]	Put a thing in front of the reader's senses instead of naming the feeling you want them to have.
Naming the Figure Exactly [H]	Tell seven figures of speech apart by what each one actually does to the sentence.
What the Sounds Are Doing [H]	Name the sound device a line is built on, and say where in the words the repetition sits.
True, Slant, and Eye Rhyme [H]	Judge a rhyme with your ear instead of your eye, and name the four kinds a poet can use.
Reading a Rhyme Scheme [H]	Label the pattern of line endings in a stanza with letters, including when the rhymes are slant.
Scanning a Line [H]	Count a line's syllables, hear where the stresses fall, and name the meter that results.
Where the Line Breaks [H]	Tell an end-stopped line from an enjambed one, and see what a break does to the words on either side of it.
Fixed Forms and Free Verse [H]	Identify the fixed forms by the promises each one makes about length, repetition, rhyme, and meter.
Revising a Poem [H]	Find the three cuts - the worn comparison, the mixed picture, and the line that explains the poem - that improve a draft more than any addition would.

Journalism & News Writing · 8 topics

The Lede and What It Promises [H]	Read a news lede for the fact it selects and the story it obligates the rest of the piece to deliver.
How a News Story Is Stacked [H]	Explain why a news story is ordered by a reader's need rather than by time, and predict what disappears when it is cut.
Who Says So [H]	Trace every sentence in a report to what the reporter saw, what a document says, or what a person claimed - and notice when a verb adds a judgment.
On the Record, and What Anonymity Costs [H]	Weigh a source by the condition they spoke under, the reason they are unnamed, and what the paper did besides take their word.
What a Quotation Is For [H]	Decide when a speaker's exact words earn their space and when a paraphrase serves the reader better.
News, Analysis, Editorial, Column [H]	Tell the four kinds of newspaper writing apart from the sentences themselves rather than from the label above them.
Balance, Weight and the Manufactured Middle [H]	Separate how much space each side of a story receives from what stands behind each side's claims, and name what the reporting has not settled.
Names, Harm and What a Paper Owes Afterward [H]	Judge a newsroom decision by what it costs the person it lands on, what it gives the reader, and whether the paper disclosed that it made a choice.

Speech, Debate & Oral Argument · 8 topics

Meeting the Argument [H]	Decide whether a reply actually answered the argument in front of it, or landed somewhere beside it.
If It Ends Even [H]	Say which side has to prove what, and what follows when nobody has proved it.
The Sentence That Decides [H]	Find the term whose meaning settles the dispute, and see what each proposed meaning would decide.
What the Question Is Doing [H]	Read a question in a cross-examination or from a bench as a move, and name what it is trying to get.
When Both Sides Are Right [H]	Compare two proved harms out loud, using likelihood, size, timing and whether the thing can be undone.
Giving Ground on Purpose [H]	Recognize a concession as a move, and say what it costs and what it buys.
Evidence, and Labels on Evidence [H]	Separate what a source says from what a speaker says it says, and name the move when the two differ.
Built for the Ear [H]	Explain what a spoken argument does differently because a listener cannot go back.

Film & Visual Rhetoric · 8 topics

What the Frame Left Out [H]	Read an image for the decision at its edges - what was excluded, and what the exclusion does to a viewer.
Everything Inside the Frame [H]	Say what the arrangement inside a shot - light, staging, color, selection - is doing to the viewer's reading of it.
The Argument in the Join [H]	Name the claim a cut makes by placing one shot next to another, and test whether the material supports it.
Speed, Duration, and the Unbroken Take [H]	Work out what a shot's length or speed is asserting, and which questions duration can and cannot settle.
The Track You Are Not Listening To [H]	Separate sound the characters can hear from sound only the audience can, and say what each one is telling the viewer to do.
Whose Account You Are Standing Inside [H]	Identify whose knowledge and whose interests an image places a viewer inside, and how that placement was built.
What an Image Can Prove [H]	State precisely what a photograph or a recording establishes, and where its authority stops.
What the Display Was Built to Answer [H]	Read a chart, poster or graphic as a made argument, without treating every design decision as a trick.

Grammar: Phrases, Clauses & Verbals · 9 topics

Which Groups of Words Can Stand Alone [H]	Tell a phrase from a clause, and a clause that stands alone from one that cannot.
What a Phrase Is Doing in the Sentence [H]	Say which word a prepositional phrase goes with and what it tells you about it.
The Words That Rename a Noun [H]	Find the noun group that renames the noun beside it, and read what its commas mean.
Commas That Change Who Is Meant [H]	Read a pair of commas as the signal that a clause is extra rather than necessary.
An -ing Word Working as a Noun [H]	Recognize an -ing word that is naming an activity rather than acting as the verb.
An -ing or -ed Word Working as an Adjective [H]	Find the noun a participial phrase describes, including when the sentence attaches it to the wrong one.
To Plus a Verb, and the Job It Does [H]	Tell an infinitive from a prepositional phrase and say what job it does in the sentence.
Active, Passive, and the Missing Doer [H]	Say who did the action in a sentence, and notice when the sentence never tells you.
Stating, Commanding, Supposing [H]	Name what a sentence is for, and catch writing that switches partway through.

Word Study: Morphology & Multisyllabic Words · 9 topics

Peeling a Long Word Apart [H]	Take the prefix and the ending off a long word and find the root inside.
Endings You Read in One Piece [H]	Chop the last chunk off a long word and read it whole.
Chunking What Is Left [H]	Divide a long content-area word into chunks you can already read.
The Loud Chunk in a Long Word [H]	Find the syllable a long word is said loudest on.
Silent E Meets an Ending [H]	Decide whether a silent e survives when an ending is added.
Doubling in a Longer Word [H]	Decide whether the last consonant doubles when a base word is longer than one syllable.
When Y Becomes I [H]	Decide whether a final y changes to i when an ending is added.
Which Change Does This Word Need? [H]	Choose among the three spelling changes, including the case where none of them applies.
A Long Word in a Real Sentence [H]	Work out an unfamiliar long word from its parts and the sentence around it.

Fluency in Longer Text · 8 topics

Breaking a Long Sentence Where It Breaks [H]	Group a long sentence at its clause and phrase joints instead of wherever your breath runs out.
Reading Straight Past an Aside [H]	Find the words a writer fenced off, and keep hold of the sentence while you read them.
Semicolons, Colons and Dashes Out Loud [H]	Give a semicolon, a colon, a dash and a set of parentheses the four different things they ask your voice to do.
The Sentence You Have to Regroup [H]	Notice when a sentence has handed you the wrong grouping, and find the word that proves it.
Dialogue Without Stumbling [H]	Say only the quoted words in a character's voice, and track who is talking when nobody is named.
The Word the Paragraph Tells You to Lean On [H]	Use what a paragraph has already said to decide which word in the next sentence carries the stress.
Saying What the Page Abbreviates [H]	Read titles, units, symbols and number ranges aloud as the words they stand for.
Mapping a Whole Paragraph Before You Read It [H]	Decide, from the marks alone, where your voice rests in a paragraph and where it keeps moving.

Kindergarten Writing · 8 topics

Draw It, Then Label It [E]	Write one naming word next to the part of your picture you mean.
Start by Naming It [M]	Write a first sentence that tells a reader what your writing is about.
Say Something New [M]	Add a sentence that tells your reader something they did not know.
Answer the Question Your Reader Asked [M]	Add the one detail that answers the question your reader asked.
First, Next, Last [M]	Tell the parts of what happened in the order they really happened.
Tell How It Felt [M]	End your story by saying how you felt about what happened.
Say What You Think [M]	Tell what you think about a book, not just what happens in it.
Tell Why You Think It [M]	Give one reason from the book for what you think about it.

Writing: First Pieces · 8 topics

Story, How-To, or Opinion? [M]	Tell a story, a how-to and an opinion apart by the job the piece is doing.
A Beginning That Tells the Reader [M]	Choose a first sentence that tells the reader what the piece is about.
The Sentence That Wandered Off [M]	Find the sentence that wandered off the point of a short piece.
Saying It Twice [H]	Spot a sentence that says something the piece has already said.
What Happened First [M]	Put the events of a story or the steps of a how-to in the order they really go.
The Step That Got Left Out [H]	Find the step a how-to left out.
An Opinion Needs a Because [H]	Back up an opinion with a sentence that says why.
An Ending That Closes [H]	Close a piece instead of just stopping it.

Listening Comprehension (K-2) · 8 topics

Who Did What? [M]	Hold on to who did which thing in something you only heard.
Where, When, and How Many [M]	Catch the small facts - where, when, how many, which one - by ear.
What Happened First [M]	Put spoken events in the order they really happened.
Doing Two Things in Order [M]	Follow a spoken direction that has two parts in it.
Did I Really Hear That? [M]	Tell what a speaker actually said from what you filled in yourself.
What the Whole Thing Was About [M]	Say what a spoken passage was about, not one true piece of it.
The Question Nobody Answered [H]	Notice what a speaker left out, so you know what to ask about.
The Word Somebody Leans On [H]	Hear which part of a sentence a speaker is correcting.

Listening Comprehension (Grades 3-5) · 8 topics

The Big Idea of Something You Heard [H]	Say what a whole spoken talk was about, not just the part you remember.
The Part You Have to Hold On To [H]	Tell what a speaker really said from what merely sounds like it.
The Order the Speaker Told It [H]	Keep track of what came first, next and last in something you heard.
What the Speaker Wants You to Do [H]	Catch the one thing a speaker is actually asking of you.
The Reason the Speaker Gave [H]	Name the reason a speaker gave, not the best reason you can think of.
A Fact They Gave, an Opinion They Held [H]	Sort what a speaker could prove from what they simply believe.
Retelling What You Heard [H]	Retell a talk in your own words with nothing missing and nothing added.
The Question the Speaker Left Open [H]	Notice what a talk never told you and turn it into a question.

Listening & a Speaker's Reasoning (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

The Sentence That Carried the Claim [H]	Pick out the position a speaker was arguing for from everything else they said.
Support That Bears on the Claim [H]	Tell support that holds a position up from something true that was said beside it.
The Claim Nobody Backed Up [H]	Sort the claims a speaker backed up from the ones they only asserted.
The Answer That Missed the Point [H]	Say what a speaker's answer actually did with the point it was aimed at.
A Move Instead of a Reason [H]	Name what a speaker did in the place where a reason was supposed to go.
Where They Actually Disagree [H]	Find the one question two speakers answer differently.
How Far the Speaker Went [H]	Report a speaker's case exactly as far as it went and no further.
What You Would Still Need to Know [H]	Name the missing fact that would actually settle an argument you heard.

Listening to Speeches & Argument (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Following a Speech by Its Signposts [H]	Use a speaker's structural cues to hold the shape of an argument you cannot reread.
Naming the Move a Speaker Just Made [H]	Say what a speech is doing at a given turn, not merely what it is about.
The Concession and What It Buys [H]	Hear what a speaker gives away, and work out what giving it away purchased.
The Appeal That Is Doing Work [H]	Tell an appeal that carries a reason from one that only warms the room.
The Premise You Are Asked to Grant [H]	Catch the unstated premise a spoken argument needs you to accept.
How Big the Claim Actually Was [H]	Keep the limits a speaker put on a claim instead of remembering a bigger one.
Evidence Heard Once [H]	Separate what a speaker observed from what they concluded, and hear what a number counts.
The Distance Between the Argument and the Ask [H]	Measure how far a speaker's request reaches past what the argument established.

Reading in Science & Technical Subjects (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Words Science Uses Narrowly [H]	Read a technical term in its narrow sense instead of importing the everyday one.
Definitions That Are Really Instructions [H]	Find the sentence that says how something was measured, and see what it fixes.
What a Step Depends On [H]	Follow a technical procedure closely enough to say why a step is where it is.
The Table Inside the Prose [H]	Pull a quantitative pattern out of numbers that are printed in sentences.
Measurement or Inference [H]	Separate what a study observed from what it concluded, and name what the step between them rests on.
What a Control Rules Out [H]	Say which rival explanation a control eliminates, and which ones survive it.
What a Result Does Not License [H]	Hold a finding to the conditions, the range and the group it actually came from.
How a Technical Account Is Built [H]	Use the shape of a technical text to tell what each part is for.

Reading in History & Social Studies (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Who Made This, and For Whom [H]	Read a document's provenance before its sentences, and say what that provenance lets it be evidence of.
What the Writer Could Actually Know [H]	Separate what a writer saw, counted or was told, and weigh each claim by the position it was made from.
What the Date Does to the Evidence [H]	Use when a document was written to decide what it can be evidence of, rather than to rank it against other accounts.
Who Was Meant to Read It [H]	Trace how the intended reader shapes what a document says, omits, and concedes.
What the Document Takes For Granted [H]	Name the belief a document never argues for, and treat it as evidence of what its readers were expected to grant.
Where Two Accounts Come Apart [H]	Compare two records of one event, locate what each was measuring, and name the third source that would settle it.
What Happened and Why It Happened [H]	Tell a claim about events apart from a claim about causes, and hold each to the evidence its kind requires.
What Is Not in the Document [H]	Judge what an omission can and cannot prove, using what the document was built to record.

Advanced Vocabulary: Roots, Etymology & Nuance (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Building a Meaning Out of the Parts [H]	Build a working meaning for a word you have never seen, from its parts, and let the sentence decide which reading survives.
The Prefix That Changed Its Spelling [H]	Find a Latin prefix that has taken the shape of the root behind it.
One Root, and the Prefix Decides [H]	Choose between words off one root, where the prefix is the whole remaining question.
What the Ending Does to the Word [H]	Read an ending as a claim about what is going on, not as a decoration on the base word.
Roots That Are Only Pretending [H]	Test a root by meaning rather than by letters, and catch the words that only look as though they have one.
Why the Word Is Spelled Like That [H]	Explain an English spelling by where the word came from, and read a spelling as evidence of an origin.
How a Word Got Where It Is [H]	Name the two ways a word's meaning moves, and read an etymology for what it actually explains.
Terms Built for One Field [H]	Read a technical term you have never seen by reading the classical parts it is assembled from.

Punctuation, Agreement & Editing (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Splice and the Semicolon [H]	Tell a comma splice from a sentence whose comma is doing legitimate work, and choose the mark the joint actually calls for.
What Has to Come Before a Colon [H]	Apply the one test a colon has to pass: whatever stands in front of it must be able to end there.
Dashes, Commas, or Parentheses [H]	Mark an interruption with a pair that matches and closes, and read what the writer's choice of mark tells you.
Commas That Change Who You Mean [H]	Read a pair of commas around a clause as a claim about how many, and punctuate to say the one you mean.
Apostrophes in the Hard Cases [H]	Form a possessive by making the plural first, and keep joint possession, family names and plain plurals straight.
The Hyphen in a Compound Modifier [H]	Hyphenate words that work as one modifier in front of a noun, and read what a hyphen changes about the meaning.
Agreement Across a Phrase, a Group, and an Everyone [H]	Find the real subject of each verb when a phrase, a collective noun or an indefinite pronoun stands in the way.
Pronouns That Could Mean Two People [H]	Catch a pronoun that is grammatical and still leaves a reader guessing, and fix it without inventing a fact.

Punctuation, Mechanics & Sentence Errors (Grades 6-8) · 9 topics

The Fragment in Longer Writing [H]	Find a fragment in writing long enough that the missing half is not obvious, and say which half is missing.
Run-Ons That Do Not Look Like Run-Ons [H]	Find the seam where a second sentence begins, and tell a run-on from a long sentence that is doing nothing wrong.
The Comma Splice and Three Ways to Fix It [H]	Recognize a comma holding two complete sentences together, and choose among the repairs that fix it.
Commas in a Series, and the Comma That Does Not Belong [H]	Punctuate a list of three or more, and tell a compound sentence from a sentence that merely has two verbs.
Commas Around a Part You Could Lift Out [H]	Decide whether a description is extra or identifying, and fence it on both sides or neither.
The Apostrophe When More Than One Owns It [H]	Form a plural possessive, and leave a plain plural alone.
Quoting a Source, Not a Speaker [H]	Quote a source exactly, mark where the quoting starts and stops, and paraphrase without the marks.
Capitals in Titles and Words Made From Names [H]	Capitalize a title the way print does, and keep the capital on an adjective built from a name.
The Word Pairs That Slip Through [H]	Choose between look-alike words using the sentence around them rather than a memorized rhyme.

Reading in Science: Life & Health Sciences (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Paragraph That Says Why [H]	Match a stated result to the passage that explains how it came about, and see what that explanation predicts.
Following the Pathway [H]	Track a multi-step biological pathway across paragraphs and work out what a break at one step would do to the rest.
What the Comparison Was Built to Show [H]	Read a described study for its comparison group and say what the design can and cannot establish.
Who the Result Is About [H]	Find the group a result was measured in and judge how far it can travel from there.
Relative Change and Actual Size [H]	Read a reported change against the baseline it is a change from, and tell a ratio apart from a difference.
Settled, Likely, Contested [H]	Sort the claims in a science text by how firmly the author is willing to stand behind each one.
What Stands In for What [H]	Spot a measurement standing in for something else and name what the substitution leaves out.
The Cost Named Beside the Benefit [H]	Read how a health text sets a benefit against a harm, and tell weighing apart from arguing.

Reading in Science: Earth, Climate & Environment (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What a Proxy Record Stands For [H]	Separate the quantity an earth science record actually contains from the quantity the author is claiming.
How the Record Was Made [H]	Read the method well enough to say what a choice of instrument, site or procedure fixes about the result.
What a Record Can Resolve [H]	Judge what a record is too coarse to show, and stop reading its silences as evidence of nothing happening.
Reading a Range Instead of a Number [H]	Use a stated uncertainty to decide what a result does and does not settle.
Observed Trend, Attributed Cause [H]	Find the exact place where a text stops reporting what was measured and starts explaining why.
What the Model Was Asked [H]	Say what a model produces, what it assumed, and which questions it was never built to answer.
Words Earth Science Uses Narrowly [H]	Read a technical term in the narrow sense the field gives it rather than the everyday sense it looks like.
How Far a Result Travels [H]	State the boundary of a study in place, time and quantity, and refuse conclusions that cross it.

Reading in History: Founding & Legal Documents (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Shall, May, Must: Duty Against Discretion [H]	Tell what a legal text commands from what it merely permits, and say who is bound by each.
The Definition Section Runs the Document [H]	Read a defined term as the document defines it, and trace what a change in the definition does to every section that uses the word.
Conditions, Triggers, and Deadlines [H]	Find what must happen before a legal provision does anything, and work out what follows when the condition fails.
Scope, Exception, and Proviso [H]	Work out exactly who and what a provision covers, and what an exception takes back out of it.
Who Is Given the Power, and How Far It Reaches [H]	Identify a grant of power in a governing document and state the limits written around it.
When Two Provisions Collide [H]	Decide whether two provisions really conflict, and use the document's own rules to say which governs.
Holding, Reasoning, and What a Court Did Not Decide [H]	Separate what a court decided from what it merely said, and read a reservation as the open question it is.
How a Dissent Reads the Majority [H]	Locate the exact point where a separate opinion parts from the majority, and test its account of the majority against the words it quotes.

Reading in History: Economics & Public Policy (Grades 9-12) · 7 topics

What the Number Actually Counts [H]	Say what a figure counts, what it is divided by, and what it leaves out, before letting it settle anything.
Compared With What [H]	Find the year, the group or the imagined alternative that a claim of change is measured against.
Who Ends Up Paying [H]	Separate the party who hands over the money from the party whose income is smaller once prices have adjusted.
How the Measure Is Supposed to Work [H]	Trace the chain of steps from an instrument to the result it promises, and name the link that could fail.
What the Estimate Takes For Granted [H]	Find the condition a projection needs in order to come true, especially when the document never states it.
How the Tradeoff Is Framed [H]	Describe what a writer has put on each side of a scale, in what units, and what was left off it entirely.
What People Do Next [H]	Predict how people rearrange themselves around a measure, and what that does to the numbers the measure was sold on.

Reading Technical & Procedural Texts (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What Has to Be True First [H]	Find the condition a document requires before a step, including the ones that are never printed as a step.
Which Branch You Are On [H]	Match a symptom to the one branch of a troubleshooting tree the document sends it to, and act on that branch only.
What a Specification Leaves Out [H]	Hold a rating, a range or a coverage term to the conditions it names, and read its silence as silence rather than as permission.
What the Warning Covers [H]	Read a hazard statement for the exact hazard it names and for what it leaves standing.
Must, Should, and May [H]	Tell a requirement from a recommendation from a permission, and say whose duty each one is.
Words the Document Defines for Itself [H]	Carry a document's own definition of a term to every later sentence that uses it, even where the ordinary sense would read smoothly.
Where the Wording Could Go Two Ways [H]	Locate the sentence two careful readers would carry out two different ways, and say what each reading would do.
How a Manual Is Put Together [H]	Use a document's architecture - sections, notes, cross-references and precedence rules - to find what governs and where it lives.

Vocabulary in Context: Shifting & Multiple Meanings (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Sense the Sentence Chose [H]	Say which of a familiar word's several meanings a particular sentence has selected.
What Did the Deciding [H]	Name the part of a sentence that settles which meaning a word is carrying.
What Job the Word Is Doing [H]	Use the grammatical slot a word is standing in to rule out the meanings it cannot be carrying.
Find the Sentence That Means It [H]	Work backward from a stated meaning to the sentence that actually puts the word to that use.
One Word, Every Blank [H]	Find the single word that fills several blanks at once, carrying a different meaning in each.
The Same Word Twice [H]	Compare two sentences that share a word and decide whether they share its meaning.
Words That Face Both Ways [H]	Read a word that carries two opposite meanings and let the sentence settle which one is in play.
The Meaning That Moves Mid-Argument [H]	Catch an argument that quietly changes what one of its own words means between the premise and the conclusion.

Idiom, Allusion & Figurative Reference (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What a Fixed Phrase Actually Means [H]	Read a fixed phrase for the meaning it carries, not for the meaning its words add up to.
The Picture Inside the Phrase [H]	Write a fixed phrase the way it is actually fixed, by recovering the picture the words came out of.
One Verb, Four Particles, Four Meanings [H]	Read a phrasal verb as a single unit, where the small word after the verb is the word that decides the meaning.
What a Reference Is Claiming [H]	Say which one feature of a shared story a writer is borrowing, and hold it apart from everything else the story contains.
Choosing the Reference That Fits [H]	Match a situation to the reference whose shape it actually has, rather than to the one whose mood it shares.
Figures the Language Chose, Figures the Writer Chose [H]	Tell a metaphor that is simply the ordinary word for a thing from one a writer built and means you to see.
When a Dead Metaphor Wakes Up [H]	Catch the everyday phrase that becomes visible again because its own picture belongs to the subject, and repair it without losing the claim.
Mixed and Strained Figures [H]	Find the sentence whose two pictures cannot both be looked at, and repair it by finishing the picture it started in.

Precision, Hedging & the Language of Claims (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Hedge or Booster [H]	Tell a verb that only reports how a result sits with a claim from one that asserts the claim.
What a Quantifier Commits You To [H]	Read most, some, up to and at least as the exact sizes of claim they are.
Words That Claim a Cause [H]	Separate wording that reports two things traveling together from wording that says one moved the other.
What One Word Changed [H]	Say what a single word swapped into a sentence adds to, or takes away from, the claim.
Where the Claim Stops [H]	Read the phrase that says how far a claim reaches, and work out what a new result can and cannot touch.
A Hedge That Says Nothing [H]	Tell a hedge that names a real limit from one that only makes the claim impossible to check.
"No Evidence" Is Not "No Effect" [H]	Keep apart a report that a search came up empty and a report that there was nothing to find.
More Than What? [H]	Read a comparative claim for the baseline it is standing on and usually does not name.

Style, Voice & Revision (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Sentence That Says It Twice [H]	Find the sentence in a draft that changes nothing a reader already knew, and cut it.
The Verb Buried in a Noun [H]	Move an action out of a noun and back into the verb - and leave it in the noun when the noun is doing work.
The Noun a Reader Can See [H]	Replace an abstract noun with the thing the draft has already named - without inventing a detail or narrowing the claim.
Where the Paragraph Breaks [H]	Put the paragraph break where the subject changes, not where the block of text starts to look long.
A Transition Is a Claim [H]	Choose the connective that names the relation two sentences actually stand in, and catch one that asserts a relation they do not.
What the Next Sentence Starts With [H]	Open each sentence on what the reader was just handed and save the new material for the end, so a paragraph pulls itself along.
When a Rule Should Be Broken [H]	Decide whether a fragment, a short sentence or a repeated word is doing work here - and put it back when it is not.
The Sentence That Breaks the Voice [H]	Find the sentence that steps out of the voice a draft has established - in level of language, or in the stance it takes.

The Analytical & Explanatory Essay (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Thesis That Explains [H]	Open an explanatory essay with a thesis that promises understanding rather than a position to defend.
Organized by Idea, Not by Source [H]	Plan an explanation around the parts of the account rather than around the order the writer read things in.
Defining a Term the Reader Does Not Have [H]	Write a definition a reader who has never met the word could use to recognize a new instance.
The Comparison That Carries the Structure [H]	Choose a comparison that maps the mechanism, and say where it stops working.
Illustration, Not Proof [H]	Use a particular case to make an idea visible without claiming it establishes one.
Summarizing a Process, Explaining Why It Works [H]	Tell a sentence that reports a step from one that says why the step is needed.
Ending an Explanation [H]	Close an explanatory essay by consolidating the account instead of calling for action.
Where the Verdict Gets In [H]	Keep the writer's own judgment out of an explanation while still reporting the judgments other people made.

The Personal & Reflective Essay (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Moment, Not the Year [H]	Choose one occasion small enough to show in full instead of a stretch of time that can only be summarized.
Where a Personal Essay Starts [H]	Open inside the occasion rather than in the background, the definition or the announcement in front of it.
The Sentence Only You Could Have Written [H]	Tell a detail that carries information nobody else could supply from one that any writer in the same situation would have.
Change You Can Watch Happen [H]	Show a change by putting the writer back into the same situation, instead of announcing that they are different now.
The Writer Then and the Writer Now [H]	Keep the earlier self limited to what it knew, and let the present self look back openly instead of smuggling knowledge into the scene.
The Sentence That Tells the Reader What to Feel [H]	Cut the sentence that names the size of a feeling and keep the one that gives a reader something to feel it from.
The Turn That Earns Its Insight [H]	Write the reflective turn so it names what the scene showed and goes one step past it, rather than asserting a lesson the scene never earned.
Ending Without Handing Down a Moral [H]	Close on the situation as it stands instead of a lesson, a pledge, a summary or a verdict on yourself.

Timed Writing: Planning Under Pressure (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What the Prompt Actually Asks [H]	Read a timed prompt for the job it sets rather than for the subject it is about.
What the Prompt Does Not Ask For [H]	Tell what a timed prompt requires from work it merely permits, and drop the second kind first.
The Two Minutes Before You Write [H]	Spend the first two minutes on the decisions a draft cannot be rewritten around.
The Position You Can Defend by the Bell [H]	Choose the position the available minutes and the available evidence can actually support.
What Fits Before the Bell [H]	Cut a plan down to what the clock can carry without dropping anything the prompt requires.
Where the Minutes Go [H]	Decide what to do next from the state of the draft and the minutes on the clock.
When to Abandon a Paragraph [H]	Decide whether a paragraph that has drifted should be cut, re-topped, trimmed, tied off, or left alone.
Four Minutes Left [H]	Spend the last minutes of a timed essay on the repair with the highest return that fits in the time.

Usage & Idiomatic English (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

The Preposition a Verb Expects [H]	Choose the preposition an English verb actually takes, and use the rest of the sentence when one verb takes two.
The Preposition an Adjective Expects [H]	Finish an adjective or a noun with the preposition it takes, and close a comparison built on a word that already carries one.
Words That Point One Way [H]	Decide which end of an exchange your subject is standing on, and choose the word or preposition that points that way.
The Verb That Takes an Object, and Its Twin [H]	Choose between lie and lay, sit and set, rise and raise by asking whether anything in the sentence is being acted on.
Pairs Where the Difference Does Work [H]	Choose between two real words whose difference changes what the sentence claims, using the evidence the sentence itself supplies.
What Is Actually Being Counted [H]	Choose fewer or less, number or amount, by asking whether the sentence counts things one at a time or measures a single quantity.
Comparing One Thing With the Same Kind of Thing [H]	Check that both sides of a comparison name the same kind of thing, and finish an incomplete comparison so it can be read only one way.
A Rule That Carries Meaning and One That Does Not [H]	Tell a change that alters what a sentence says from one that only obeys a rule English never had, and spend the editing pass on the first.

Concision & Sentence Combining (Grades 9-12) · 7 topics

Words That Say It Twice [H]	Cut a modifier that repeats its own noun, and keep the one that rules something out.
The Five-Word Detour [H]	Replace a stock phrase with the single word it was standing in for, and notice when the single word would say something else.
The Opener That Reports Nothing [H]	Delete an opening that only delays the subject, and keep an opening that is carrying the claim.
A Clause That Could Be a Phrase [H]	Shrink a clause to a phrase when the facts survive it, and leave it alone when they do not.
Two Sentences, One Relation [H]	Fold two sentences into one so that the grammar carries the relation the draft stated, and no relation it did not.
When Shorter Says Less [H]	Trim a sentence to the point where the next cut would take a fact with it, and stop there.
A Cut That Lets In a Second Reading [H]	Spot the shortening that gives a sentence a meaning it did not have, and put back only the words that rule it out.

Long-Form Nonfiction & Extended Argument (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What a Section Is For [H]	Say what a paragraph or section does for the whole argument, not what it says.
Why It Comes in This Order [H]	Explain what the sequence of an argument assumes about its reader, and what a rearrangement would break.
What a Concession Buys [H]	Identify what a writer gives up in a long argument and what the surrender purchases.
The Sentence That Turns It [H]	Find the hinge of a long argument and say exactly what changes there.
The Example That Comes Back [H]	Explain what a returning image or example does the second time that it could not do the first.
What Would Be Lost [H]	Test a section by deleting it and naming precisely what the argument no longer has.
Where the Words Went [H]	Read the amount of space a writer spends as evidence of what the writer expects to be argued with about.
The Last Paragraph's Job [H]	Say what an ending does beyond summarizing, and what it deliberately leaves the reader holding.

Statistics & Quantitative Claims in Argument (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Percent of What [H]	Find the quantity a percentage is a percentage of, and say what changes when a different quantity is put underneath it.
Absolute Change and Relative Change [H]	Report a change both ways - as a count and as a proportion of where it started - and say which one the argument in front of you needs.
What a Rate Corrects For [H]	Read the divisor of a rate, name what it holds constant, and name what it leaves untouched.
Where the Comparison Starts [H]	Ask which figure a change is measured from, and say how a different starting point would move the claim.
What an Average Hides [H]	Treat an average as one point inside a distribution, and say what a median, a spread or a share above a line would add to it.
When a Correlation Carries a Cause [H]	Separate a measured association from the causal sentence an argument wants it to support, and name the comparison that would settle it.
The Difference and the Error [H]	Weigh a reported difference against how far the measurement could move on its own, and say when a gap is too small for the method to see.
Carrying a Trend Forward [H]	Say what an "at this rate" sentence is assuming, and name a reason the measured rate might not hold.

Reading Aloud: Prosody in Complex Text (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Where the Breath Goes [H]	Break a forty-word sentence at its joints, so that no group of words arrives in pieces.
The Sentence That Has Not Finished Yet [H]	Keep the voice open through a sentence that stacks its conditions first and states its point last.
Holding the Sentence Across an Interruption [H]	Hold a sentence open across an aside, and come back to the main clause at exactly the level you left it.
What Each Mark Asks Your Voice For [H]	Give each mark on the page the pause and the pitch it actually asks for, instead of pausing the same way at all of them.
The Word the Sentence Turns On [H]	Put the stress on the one word the sentence before it did not already supply, and hear what that stress commits you to.
A Line Is Not the Sentence Inside It [H]	Read verse by the sentence and by the line at the same time, and hear what a poet gets out of the difference.
Making the Structure Audible [H]	Read a speech so that a listener can hear the shape the writer built into it.
The Tone the Paragraph Earns [H]	Decide how a line has to be read from what the paragraph around it has already put on the table.

The Novel: Extended Narrative & Structure (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

What a Chapter Opening Takes for Granted [H]	Identify what a page of a novel expects the reader to already know, and say what the writing buys by refusing to explain it.
Scenes That Rhyme [H]	Read a scene against an earlier one it repeats, and state what the difference between them measures.
How Close the Telling Stands [H]	Track how far the narration is standing from a character, and say what a move nearer or further away is doing.
What the Second Story Says About the First [H]	Explain what a subplot contributes to the main story it never touches.
The Image That Comes Back [H]	Say what an object or image picks up by returning late in a book after being planted early.
Reading From Where You Stand [H]	Judge what a scene's placement in a long book does to what the scene means.
Where a Chapter Stops [H]	Explain what a chapter's chosen beginning and ending do, and what a break between chapters costs or buys.
The Person the Book Kept [H]	Say what a novel accomplishes by bringing back a character it introduced briefly and left alone for hundreds of pages.

Reading in Science: Technology, Computing & Engineering (Grades 9-12) · 8 topics

Tracing a Rule Written in Prose [H]	Follow a decision rule stated in sentences and say what it does with a particular case, including the cases it settles quietly.
What the Trade Costs [H]	Name what an engineering choice buys, what it pays with, and which of the two the text has left unstated.
The Constraint That Rules It Out [H]	Find the stated limit that eliminates a candidate, and say why nothing the candidate is good at brings it back.
Requirement or Preference [H]	Tell a line that can disqualify a candidate from a line that can only rank the candidates left, and use each for what it can do.
What a Failure Analysis Establishes [H]	Separate what a failure investigation proved from what it merely failed to rule out, and tell a cause from a condition.
What a Part Promises [H]	Hold a component's promise to exactly what it covers, and name what it deliberately leaves to something else.
What Changes When It Gets Bigger [H]	Say which quantity is fixed, which grows, and how fast, when a described design is made larger or busier.
Which Number Was Measured [H]	Read a quoted figure for the quantity it measures and the conditions it was measured under, before reading it as a claim about performance.

Character, Motive & Change (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

What a Character Is After [H]	Work out what a character is after from what they do, not from what they say.
How You Know What They Want [H]	Point at the detail that makes a motive more than a guess.
Wanting Two Things at Once [H]	Name the two things a character wants at once, and see which one the choice puts on top.
What the Choice Costs [H]	Find what a choice costs a character, including the cost nobody in the story mentions.
Where the Change Shows [H]	Locate where a character changes when the text refuses to announce it.
What the Character Cannot See [H]	Read the gap between what a character believes and what the text shows.
Two People, One Event [H]	Use two reactions to one event to measure both people.
Would They Do That? [H]	Judge which actions fit a character's record and which would need a change the text never shows.

How a Story Is Built (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

What a Scene Sets Up [H]	Name what a scene plants for later, and say what a later page would have to stop and explain if the plant were not there.
What the Opening Withholds [H]	Say what a first page or first paragraph keeps back, and what the story buys by keeping it back.
Why It Is Told Out of Order [H]	Tell story order apart from telling order, and say what moving an event out of its place buys the writer.
What the Backward Look Explains [H]	Name the exact thing a backward look explains, and say why it arrives where it does rather than anywhere else.
Where the Story Turns [H]	Find the moment a part of a story stops being able to go back, and defend the exact line you chose.
What Would Be Lost If This Were Cut [H]	Remove a scene, a sentence or a detail in your head, and name exactly what stops working in the pages around the hole.
Reading From Where the Excerpt Sits [H]	Use a note about where an excerpt falls in a longer work to decide what the page may assume and what its job is.
Where a Part Stops, and Why There [H]	Explain what the last line of a scene, chapter or story closes, and what it deliberately leaves open.

Symbol, Mood & Figurative Meaning (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

What an Image Does to the Feeling [H]	Name the mood a passage builds and point at the nouns and verbs that build it, instead of naming a feeling the subject suggests.
Where the Feeling Turns [H]	Find the line where a passage's mood changes and name what changed it, rather than pointing at the biggest event.
What a Comparison Claims [H]	Say what a comparison asserts about the thing compared, and say what it deliberately does not assert.
How One Word Colors a Description [H]	Name what a chosen word adds that a plainer word would not - a person, a history, an audience, an attitude - not just whether it sounds good or bad.
Why the Same Thing Keeps Coming Back [H]	Track a detail that appears more than once and say what the later appearances gain from the earlier ones.
When a Thing Starts to Stand for Something [H]	Say what an object has come to stand for and point at the words in the text that paid for it.
What a Description Tells You That Nobody Says [H]	Read a description as evidence about the person doing the describing and the situation they are in, not only about the thing described.
How Far a Reading Goes [H]	Sort a proposed reading into supported, merely allowed, or ruled out, and name the words that decide it.

Argument: Claim, Reason & Evidence (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Which Sentence Is the Claim [H]	Find the one sentence a piece of argument is trying to get you to accept, and tell it apart from the facts and reasons that hold it up.
The Reasons Under a Claim [H]	Pick out the reasons a writer gives for a claim, and say what job each one is doing in the argument.
Reason or Evidence? [H]	Tell a reason apart from the evidence offered for it, and spot a sentence that looks like evidence but never measures anything.
What a Fact Is Doing There [H]	Follow a piece of evidence to the reason it was put there to support, and describe the chain that connects them.
The Reason Nobody Backed Up [H]	Find the reason a writer states and then never supports, and say what kind of evidence would be needed to fix it.
Evidence That Does Not Fit [H]	Judge whether a piece of evidence actually supports the reason it is attached to, even when the evidence itself is perfectly true.
What the Writer Expects You to Agree With [H]	Name the step an argument needs but never states - the thing the writer counts on the reader already believing.
What Would Change the Conclusion [H]	Say which new fact would do the most damage to an argument, and which missing evidence would settle it.

Text Structure & How Information Is Organized (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

What a Paragraph Is Doing for the Whole [H]	Name the job one paragraph does for the article around it, not just what the paragraph says.
What a Transition Claims [H]	Say what relationship a connecting word claims between two parts - and read the relationship when there is no connecting word at all.
Where the Comparison Does the Explaining [H]	Find the comparison a nonfiction writer is using as a tool, and say exactly what it explains and what it does not claim.
What a Heading Promises [H]	Read a heading as a promise with two halves, then check whether the section under it pays.
Why This Shape and Not Another [H]	Say what a writer's choice of organization makes possible, and what a different order would have cost.
What a Swap Would Cost [H]	Test the order of an article by moving a paragraph in your head and naming exactly what breaks.
A Shape Inside a Shape [H]	Tell the structure of a whole text apart from the structure of one paragraph sitting inside it.
The Order Inside a Paragraph [H]	Explain why the sentences inside one paragraph sit in the order they do, and decide where a new sentence belongs.

Sources, Bias & What to Trust (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Who Made This, and Where It Turned Up [H]	Read the frame around a text - who wrote it, where it appeared, when - and say what that settles and what it leaves open.
Who Gains If You Believe It [H]	Name what a writer stands to gain from a reader's belief, and use that to decide where to look rather than what to conclude.
Saw It, or Was Told It [H]	Trace a claim back through everyone it passed through, and separate what a writer witnessed from what reached them secondhand.
Reported, or Concluded [H]	Separate what a writer observed or measured from what the writer worked out on top of it, and notice where the second step happened.
What You Are Not Being Told [H]	Find the number, comparison or group a text leaves out, and say why that absence changes what the text can support.
How Would You Check One Claim [H]	Choose the move that would actually settle a specific claim, using a record or a measurement outside the text that made it.
The Same Fact in Two Places [H]	Explain how one true fact can leave opposite impressions in two texts, without either text saying anything false.
What This Source Is Good Evidence For [H]	Decide what a source can actually support, instead of deciding whether the source is trustworthy.

Word Building: Roots, Prefixes & Suffixes (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Finding the Root Inside a Long Word [H]	Find the piece of a long word that carries its core meaning, and say what that piece means.
Building a Meaning Out of the Parts [H]	Build a working meaning for a word you have never met, and let the sentence decide whether you built the right one.
What the Prefix Is Doing [H]	Say what a prefix is doing to the root behind it, and tell it from the prefixes it looks like.
One Base, Four Prefixes [H]	Choose which prefixed form of a base word a sentence actually needs.
Two Endings, Two Different Words [H]	Choose between two endings on the same base that fill the same slot and make different claims.
The Same Root in Two Classes [H]	Recognize one root doing the same work in science, in social studies and in English.
When the Parts Do Not Add Up [H]	Catch the words whose parts predict one meaning while the word means another.
Endings That Tell You What Kind of Word It Is [H]	Read a technical word from any class by reading what its ending says the word names.

Connotation, Tone & Shades of Meaning (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Ladders of Strength [H]	Rank near-synonyms from the weakest to the strongest.
The Word the Facts Support [H]	Pick the word whose size matches the record, and reject the one that adds a fact.
The Word That Fits the Reader [H]	Choose the wording that fits a stated reader, and spot the one word that does not.
One Word Swapped [H]	Say what changed when a neutral word was traded for a loaded one - and what did not.
Praise Here, Complaint There [H]	Judge a word by the sentence it is in, not by a list of positive and negative words.
What It Says and How It Makes Them Look [H]	Separate what a sentence asserts from the impression its wording leaves.
Taking the Verdict Out [H]	Rewrite a loaded sentence so every fact survives and the judgment does not.
The Attitude the Words Add Up To [H]	Name a writer's tone precisely and find the line that is carrying it.

Words That Do a Job: Academic & Subject Vocabulary (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

What the Task Verb Makes You Hand In [H]	Say what an assignment verb requires you to produce, and pick the answer that produces it.
The Word a Science Class Means Narrowly [H]	Use the narrow meaning a subject gives a familiar word, and decide cases with it.
Two Words a Subject Keeps Apart [H]	Sort a statement into the right one of two terms a subject refuses to let you blur.
The Slot a Word Has to Fit [H]	Choose the academic word that fits the frame a sentence has already set, not just the one that means the right thing.
A Definition That Actually Defines [H]	Write and recognize a definition that names the category and what sets the term apart from its neighbors.
The Words for What the Numbers Did [H]	Describe a set of numbers in the exact words a subject uses for rise, fall, steadiness and size of change.
Saying It the Way the Assignment Asked [H]	Rewrite a spoken sentence in report language without adding, dropping or inflating anything.
The Assignment That Asks for Two Things [H]	Find both products a two-part prompt requires, and say which half an answer is still missing.

Sentence Variety & Style (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Three Sentences Into One [H]	Fold short sentences into one without losing a fact or inventing one.
Which Fact the Sentence Is About [H]	Choose which fact becomes the sentence's own statement and which get folded in as description.
The Words a Sentence Ends On [H]	Move the when, the where and the who-said-so out of the last position and leave it for what happened.
What a Paragraph Drums On [H]	Hear when every sentence in a paragraph opens the same way, and say what the repeated opening is.
Starting the Sentence Somewhere Else [H]	Move a when, a where or a describing phrase to the front without changing what the sentence says.
The Short Sentence That Lands [H]	End a run of long sentences with a short one that says what they showed.
The Sentence That Says It Again [H]	Find the sentence that adds nothing an earlier sentence had not already said.
Naming What a Paragraph Needs [H]	Check a draft paragraph against the four faults this unit names and say which one it has.

Usage, Voice & Consistency (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Putting the Doer Back Into the Sentence [H]	Rewrite a sentence that hides who acted, using the doer the paragraph has already given you, and change nothing else.
When the Passive Is the Right Choice [H]	Say what the passive voice is doing in a sentence instead of treating it as a mistake.
The Verb Matches the Subject, Not the Nearest Noun [H]	Find the real subject across an interrupting phrase and give it the verb it needs.
Group Words, and the Number They Keep [H]	Keep a verb and a pronoun on the same number as the word they both point back to.
The Pronoun With Nothing to Point At [H]	Catch a pronoun that could mean either of two things, or nothing at all, and fix it without changing the sentence.
The Sentence That Slips Out of Tense [H]	Hold one tense across a paragraph, and tell a real slip from a shift the meaning requires.
Staying With the Same Person [H]	Notice writing that stops describing someone and starts addressing the reader, and put it back.
Forms Speech Allows and Writing Does Not [H]	Choose the edited form of the constructions that are ordinary in speech and get marked in school writing.

Writing an Argument: Counterclaims & Rebuttal (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Which Sentence Is the Counterclaim [H]	Tell a counterclaim from a reason, a fact both sides accept, and a complaint that is not aimed at the claim at all.
The Other Side at Its Strongest [H]	Pick the version of the objection that is worth answering instead of the version that is easiest to knock over.
Saying What They Actually Said [H]	Report an objection without a sneering verb, an invented motive, a shrunken count, or a smaller version of the claim.
Conceding Without Giving Up [H]	Grant the part of an objection that is true without granting the argument along with it.
The Sentence That Turns It Back [H]	Answer a counterclaim with a reason it does not settle the question, rather than with the claim again.
Arguing With Something Nobody Said [H]	Spot a rebuttal that answers a claim the other side never made, and name the claim it answered instead.
Where the Counterclaim Goes [H]	Place the counterclaim paragraph by asking whether the reader already holds the objection.
The Four Moves, and the One That Is Missing [H]	Check a counterclaim paragraph for all four moves, including the ones a draft only pretends to make.

Writing from Sources (Grades 6-8) · 8 topics

Summary or Paraphrase? [H]	Tell a summary of a whole passage from a paraphrase of one sentence, and know which one a writing job is asking for.
The Paraphrase That Is Too Close [H]	Spot the two ways a restatement is still the source's writing: the same shape with new words, or a new shape with the source's words inside it.
Building the Sentence Again [H]	Rebuild a source sentence so the writing is yours and the claim is still the source's.
When to Quote and When to Say It Yourself [H]	Decide whether a sentence needs the source's exact words or only the information in it.
Telling the Reader Who Is Speaking [H]	Introduce a quotation so the reader knows whose words they are - including when the source is quoting somebody else.
The Verb That Reports Honestly [H]	Choose a reporting verb that matches how certain the source was, which way the point cuts, and whether it looks forward or back.
Fitting a Quotation Into Your Own Sentence [H]	Build a sentence that has a slot for the quoted words, so the whole thing reads as one sentence.
Cutting a Quotation Without Changing It [H]	Use three dots and square brackets to shorten and adjust a quotation while the source's claim survives intact.

Shades of Meaning & Word Relationships (Grade 3) · 8 topics

Words Come in Sizes [M]	Put words that mean almost the same thing in order of how strong they are.
Who Felt It More? [H]	Use two words to tell which person felt something more strongly - and say when you cannot.
Same, Opposite, or Stronger? [H]	Say how two related words go together: the same, opposite, one stronger, or simply different.
Does the Word Match What Happened? [H]	Judge whether a writer's feeling word is the right size for what the text actually shows.
The Sentence Picks the Word [H]	Choose the word whose strength matches what the sentence actually says.
How Sure Does It Sound? [H]	Tell how certain a speaker is, and pass a hedged statement on without hardening it into a fact.
How Do You Know? [H]	Pick the word that tells how a person came by something: saw it, was told, worked it out, or has no idea.
What the Character Really Felt [H]	Name a character's feeling from what they do, even when their own words say something else.

Academic & Subject Words (Grade 3) · 8 topics

The Word for the Job [M]	Name the job a teacher's directions are asking for.
Did the Answer Do the Job? [H]	Pick the sentence that does the job the directions asked for, out of four that are all true.
One Word, Two Jobs [H]	Tell which meaning a familiar word is carrying in the sentence in front of you.
Using a Word the Class Way [H]	Find the sentence that uses a word the way a science, math or social studies book uses it.
The Science Word for It [H]	Choose the science word that names the thing a sentence is describing.
The Social Studies Word for It [H]	Choose the social studies word that names what a sentence is about.
The Word the Book Would Explain [H]	Find the subject word inside a science or social studies sentence.
The Exact Word, Not the Vague One [H]	Replace a vague word with the exact one the sentence actually shows.

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