Common Core ELA5th GradeReading: Informational

RI.5.3: Explain How Events and Ideas Connect

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.3 · Cluster: Key Ideas and Details.

The Official Wording

Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 5, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.5.3 Means in Plain English

Fifth graders explain how things in a nonfiction text act on each other, not just what each one is. Plowing up prairie grass did not cause the Dust Bowl on its own, and neither did the drought. Students show, with facts from the text, how the two together did.

Fourth graders (RI.4.3) explained what happened and why, one event at a time. Fifth grade asks how two or more events, people or ideas connect. In sixth grade (RI.6.3) students analyze how one key person, event or idea is introduced and developed across a text.

RI.5.3 I Can Statements

I can explain how two events in a history text are connected.
I can show how one idea or event led to another.
I can use facts from the text to explain a relationship.

RI.5.3 Worked Example

Both answers name a real cause, and the difference is whether the answer explains how the causes worked together.

Read the Story

In the 1920s, farmers on the southern Great Plains plowed up millions of acres of prairie grass to plant wheat. Wheat prices were high, and new tractors made plowing fast.For thousands of years, the deep roots of the prairie grass had held the soil in place through dry spells and strong winds.In the early 1930s, a long drought settled over the plains. The wheat died, and nothing was left to hold the dry, bare soil.The wind lifted the soil into dust storms so thick that noon looked like midnight. The worst came on April 14, 1935, a day people called Black Sunday.In 1935, the government set up the Soil Conservation Service to teach farmers to plow along the curves of the land, and workers planted long rows of trees across the plains to slow the wind.

A short passage written for this page.

Question: How did the plowing of the 1920s and the drought of the 1930s work together to cause the dust storms?

Not Yet“The drought caused the dust storms because it didn’t rain.”It names one cause and stops. The passage says the prairie grass had held the soil through earlier dry spells, so the drought alone does not explain the storms.

Meets the Standard“The plowing took away the grass whose roots ‘had held the soil in place’ through dry spells. Then the drought killed the wheat, so ‘nothing was left to hold the dry, bare soil,’ and the wind lifted it. Without the plowing, the grass would have held the soil, and without the drought, the wheat would have.”It shows an interaction, not a list: each event set up the other, and the answer proves it with specific facts from two different lines.

Question Stems to Use

How are these two events connected?What did the first event make possible?Would the second event have happened without the first? How do you know?Which facts in the text show the link?How does the solution connect to the cause of the problem?

Common Mistakes with RI.5.3

Naming one cause for a two-cause event

“The Dust Bowl happened because there was a drought.”

Try this: Ask “Had there been dry spells before? What was different this time?” and send students back to the line about grass roots.

Listing events instead of linking them

“Farmers plowed. Then there was a drought. Then there were dust storms.”

Try this: Ban “then” for this task and require a linking phrase such as because, so, which meant or as a result between events.

Explaining the link from memory

“The farmers were greedy and ruined the land.”

Try this: Require one fact from the text for each side of the relationship, and strike any claim the passage does not support.

Where RI.5.3 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.4.3Explain events, procedures and ideas in a science or history text, including what happened and why.

AlongsideRI.5.5Name the overall structure, such as cause and effect, that holds those relationships together.RL.5.3Compare characters, settings or events in a story using specific details.

Comes NextRI.6.3Analyze how a key person, event or idea is introduced, illustrated and developed across a text.

Practice RI.5.3

Quick Check

What had held the soil of the plains in place before the 1920s?
The deep roots of the prairie grass, which “had held the soil in place through dry spells and strong winds.”
Why did farmers plow up the prairie in the 1920s?
Wheat prices were high, and new tractors made plowing fast.
How did the government’s response connect to the cause of the dust storms?
The storms came from bare soil blowing away. Plowing along the curves of the land kept the soil in place, and rows of trees slowed the wind that lifted it.

RI.5.3: Other Names

RI.5.3CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.3