Skip to main content
Common Core ELA6th GradeReading: Informational

RI.6.5: Explain How One Part Fits the Whole Text

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 6th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.

Common Core State Standards, Grade 6, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.6.5 Means in Plain English

Sixth graders ask what job one part of a nonfiction text is doing: setting up a problem, giving proof, turning toward a solution. In a passage on the Aral Sea, the last paragraph is more than a fact: it turns a story of loss into one of partial repair.

Fifth graders (RI.5.5) compared the overall structures of two texts. Sixth grade zooms in on a single sentence, paragraph or section and what it does for the ideas. Seventh grade (RI.7.5) zooms back out, mapping how every major section contributes to the whole.

RI.6.5 I Can Statements

  • I can name the job a paragraph does in a nonfiction text.
  • I can explain how one section moves the text’s ideas forward.
  • I can tell what the text would lose without a given part.

RI.6.5 Worked Example

The question asks what the last paragraph does, and the weak answer only says what it says.

Read the Story
In 1960, the Aral Sea in Central Asia was the fourth-largest lake in the world. Fishing fleets worked its waters, and its ports shipped fish across the Soviet Union.That decade, Soviet planners dug canals to carry water from the two rivers that fed the sea to new cotton fields in the desert. The cotton grew. The sea, now fed by only a trickle, began to dwindle.By the 2000s, the sea had dwindled to about a tenth of its old size. In the former port of Moynaq, rusting fishing boats still sit on dry sand, many miles from the water.In 2005, Kazakhstan finished a dam that keeps one river’s water in the small northern part of the sea. Since then the water there has risen, the fish have returned and boats have gone back out.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What does the last paragraph contribute to the structure of the passage and to the development of its ideas?
Not Yet“The last paragraph tells about a dam that Kazakhstan built in 2005 to save the sea.”It summarizes the paragraph, and gets it wrong: the dam saves only “the small northern part.” Nothing in the answer says what job the paragraph does in the whole passage.
Meets the Standard“The first three paragraphs build a cause and effect: canals took the rivers’ water, so the sea lost water until boats sat ‘on dry sand.’ The last paragraph turns that into problem and solution. It also proves the cause, since keeping ‘one river’s water’ in the sea made the water rise again. And it limits the hope, because only ‘the small northern part’ recovered.”It describes the structure before the paragraph, names how the paragraph changes it and explains two ways it develops the ideas, with a quotation for each.
Question Stems to Use
What job does this paragraph do: introduce, explain, prove, turn or conclude?How would the passage change if this part were cut?Why is this sentence placed here and not earlier?How does this section connect to the one before it?What idea does this part develop or complicate?

Common Mistakes with RI.6.5

Summarizing instead of explaining the job

“Paragraph 4 is about a dam.”

Try this: Give students a bank of job verbs, like introduces, proves, turns or limits, and require one in every answer about structure.

Looking at the part alone

An answer about the dam that never mentions the canals or the stranded boats

Try this: Ask how the part connects to the paragraphs around it, and to the opening, before students decide what job it does.

Naming the overall structure and stopping

“The passage is cause and effect.”

Try this: Follow up with “Where does that structure change, and why there?” so students look at how one part shifts the whole.

Where RI.6.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.5.5Compare the overall structures of two or more texts, such as time order and cause and effect.
AlongsideRL.6.5Explain how one scene, chapter or stanza fits a story or poem, the same question asked of fiction.RST.6-8.5Analyze how the sections of a science text build an understanding of the topic.
Comes NextRI.7.5Map a text’s whole structure and what each major section contributes.

Practice RI.6.5

Quick Check

  1. What structure do the first three paragraphs of the Aral Sea passage follow?
  2. What does the sentence about rusting boats in Moynaq add?
  3. Why does the last paragraph matter to the passage’s ideas?

RI.6.5: Other Names

RI.6.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.5

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.