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Common Core ELA1st GradeReading: Informational

RI.1.5: Use Text Features to Find Facts

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 1st Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Know and use various text features (e.g., headings, tables of contents, glossaries, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 1, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.1.5 Means in Plain English

First graders use the parts of a nonfiction book that point the way: the table of contents, headings, bold words, the glossary and the icons or menus on a screen. To learn what mucus means in a book on sneezes, they turn to the glossary instead of rereading.

In kindergarten (RI.K.5) children found the front cover, back cover and title page. Now they look inside the book and use its features to jump to one fact. In 2nd grade (RI.2.5) the list grows to captions, subheadings and an index at the back.

RI.1.5 I Can Statements

  • I can use the table of contents to find a page.
  • I can use headings to know what a part is about.
  • I can look up a bold word in the glossary.

RI.1.5 Worked Example

The features of a short book about sneezes, in the order a reader meets them, and one question about where to look for a word’s meaning.

Read the Story
Table of contents: Your Nose at Work, page 2. What Makes You Sneeze, page 4. Cover Your Sneeze, page 8. Glossary, page 12.Heading on page 4: What Makes You SneezePage 4 text: Dust or pepper gets caught in the mucus inside your nose. It tickles, and your body blasts it out with a sneeze! The word mucus is printed in bold.Icon on page 8: a small hand beside the words Try It, marking something to do yourself, like sneezing into your elbow.Glossary, page 12: mucus, the wet, sticky stuff inside your nose that traps dust.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: You want to know what the bold word mucus means. Where do you look, and how do you know?
Not Yet“I’d start at page 1 and read till I find it.”It could work in a short book, and the child is willing. But it skips the clue the book gives: a bold word is a signal that its meaning is waiting in the glossary.
Meets the Standard“In the glossary on page 12. The word is in bold, so it’s in the glossary. It says mucus is the wet, sticky stuff in your nose that traps dust.”The child names the feature, explains how the bold print sent them there, and uses it to get the fact in one step.
Question Stems to Use
Which page would you turn to? How do you know?What does this heading tell us this part is about?Why is this word in bold?Where can we find what a bold word means?What does this little picture next to the words mean?

Common Mistakes with RI.1.5

Reading from page 1 to find one fact

Turning page by page to find out how to cover a sneeze

Try this: Ask a hunt question like “Which page tells how to cover a sneeze?” and accept only answers found in the table of contents.

Treating bold print as decoration

“It’s dark because it’s important,” with no idea where to go next

Try this: Teach the move as a chain: see a bold word, turn to the glossary, read the meaning, come back to the page.

Reading a heading as the first sentence

Reading “What Makes You Sneeze” straight into the paragraph as if it were part of it

Try this: Cover the text under a heading and ask what the part will be about, then uncover it and check.

Where RI.1.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.K.5Find the front cover, back cover and title page of a book.
AlongsideRI.1.6Tell which information comes from the pictures and which comes from the words.W.1.7Join a shared research project, where finding facts fast in several books pays off.
Comes NextRI.2.5Use captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, menus and icons to find key facts quickly.

Practice RI.1.5

Quick Check

  1. Which page tells you how to cover a sneeze?
  2. What does mucus mean?
  3. What does the small hand icon on page 8 mean?

RI.1.5: Other Names

RI.1.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.1.5

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.