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Common Core ELA4th GradeReading: Informational

RI.4.10: Read Grade 4 to 5 Nonfiction with Understanding

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.10 · Cluster: Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity.

Get the Sequence OrganizerAll 43 4th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 4, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.4.10 Means in Plain English

By the end of the year, fourth graders read history, science and technical texts in the grades 4 to 5 range and understand them, with help on the hardest ones. A passage on how the ear turns sound into signals is the kind they can explain afterward.

Third grade (RI.3.10) ended with the grades 2 to 3 range read independently. Fourth grade moves up to the 4 to 5 range, with scaffolding at its high end. Fifth graders (RI.5.10) read the top of that same range on their own.

RI.4.10 I Can Statements

  • I can read a grade 4 science or history text and explain it.
  • I can slow down and reread the hardest part of a text.
  • I can explain a process in order, in my own words.

RI.4.10 Worked Example

A how-it-works passage near the top of the 4th-grade range, and the question checks whether the reader followed the chain in the middle or jumped from the first line to the last.

Read the Story
Every sound you hear starts as a vibration. When a drum is struck, its skin shakes back and forth and pushes on the air around it, sending out waves of sound.Your outer ear funnels those waves into a tunnel called the ear canal. At the end of the tunnel is the eardrum, a thin skin stretched tight. When sound waves hit it, the eardrum vibrates too.Behind the eardrum are three tiny bones, the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup. The stirrup is the smallest bone in your body. Together, the three bones pass the vibrations along and make them stronger.The stirrup pushes on the cochlea, a tube shaped like a snail shell and filled with liquid. Inside it, thousands of tiny hair cells bend as the liquid ripples. Their movement sends signals along a nerve to your brain, and only then do you hear the sound.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What happens between the moment a sound wave enters your ear and the moment you hear it? Why might a torn eardrum make it harder to hear?
Not Yet“The sound goes in your ear and then your brain hears it. A torn eardrum would hurt.”The answer jumps from the first line to the last and skips the eardrum, the bones and the cochlea, the hard middle where all the work happens. The second part is a guess, not something the passage explains.
Meets the Standard“The outer ear funnels the sound waves into the ear canal, and they make the eardrum vibrate. The three tiny bones pass the vibrations along and make them stronger. The stirrup pushes on the cochlea, the liquid ripples, the hair cells bend, and they send signals along a nerve to the brain. A torn eardrum might not vibrate the way it should, so less of the sound would get passed along to the bones and the cochlea.”Every link in the chain is there, in order and in the student’s own words, and the torn-eardrum answer comes from understanding the chain, not from a guess.
Question Stems to Use
What happens first? What happens next?Which part of the passage was hardest? Read it again slowly.What does this word mean here? Which words around it help?Can you draw what the passage describes and label each part?What would happen if one step in the process did not work?

Common Mistakes with RI.4.10

Skipping the hard middle

“Sound goes in your ear and your brain hears it.”

Try this: Have students stop after each paragraph and name the part of the ear it describes before they move on.

Getting lost in the new words

Hammer, anvil, stirrup and cochlea mixed up, so the order of the chain falls apart

Try this: Have students sketch and label the ear as they read, adding each part in the order the passage names it.

Keeping every text easy

A year of short, leveled passages that never reach the top of the 4 to 5 range

Try this: Give students a hard science or history text each week with a clear question to answer, and pull back support as the year goes on.

Where RI.4.10 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.3.10Read grades 2 to 3 informational texts independently and proficiently, at the high end of the range.
AlongsideRL.4.10The same expectation for stories, plays and poems.RF.4.4Read on-level text accurately and fluently, using context to confirm or correct words.
Comes NextRI.5.10Read grades 4 to 5 informational texts independently and proficiently, at the high end of the range.

Practice RI.4.10

Fill-in-the-Blank GeneratorFree ToolPaste the passage and blank out the words that carry the science, like eardrum, vibrates and cochlea, for a quick check after reading.Paste a passageScience wordsGrade 4
Make a Worksheet

Quick Check

  1. What does the eardrum do when sound waves hit it?
  2. What do the three tiny bones do?
  3. What happens inside the cochlea?

RI.4.10: Other Names

RI.4.10CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.10

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.