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Common Core ELA5th GradeReading: Literature

RL.5.5: How Chapters, Scenes and Stanzas Fit Together

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 43 5th Grade ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.

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

What RL.5.5 Means in Plain English

Fifth graders explain how the parts of a text work together: how each chapter sets up the next, how scenes build a play, how stanzas build a poem. A poem that moves from dawn to dusk has a structure, and its last stanza may answer its first.

In 4th grade (RL.4.5) students learned the parts by name: verse, rhythm, meter, stage directions. Fifth grade asks what the parts do together. In 6th grade (RL.6.5) students zoom in on one sentence, scene or stanza and explain how it develops the theme, setting or plot.

RL.5.5 I Can Statements

  • I can explain what each stanza, scene or chapter adds to the whole.
  • I can explain how an ending connects back to the beginning.
  • I can describe the pattern that holds a story or poem together.

RL.5.5 Worked Example

A three-stanza poem, each stanza on one line with a slash between its two lines. The question is about the whole, not any one part.

Read the Story
At six the pond is a sheet of glass, / so still I’m sure that nothing lives there.By noon the dragonflies stitch the air, / and turtles line the log like stones.At dusk the frogs begin, a hundred voices. / They were under the glass all along.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: How do the three stanzas fit together, and what does the last stanza do to the first?
Not Yet“The first stanza is morning, the second is noon and the third is night.”Accurate, but it only labels each stanza. It never says how they connect or why the poem ends where it does.
Meets the Standard“The stanzas follow one day, and each shows more life than the one before. The first stanza says the pond is so still ‘that nothing lives there,’ and the last stanza answers it: the frogs ‘were under the glass all along.’ The ending proves the speaker’s first idea was wrong.”It names the pattern across all three stanzas and shows how the last one turns back on the first, which is the structure doing its work.
Question Stems to Use
What does each stanza add that the one before it didn’t?What changes between the first stanza and the last?Why do you think the poet put this stanza last?How does this chapter or scene set up the next one?What would the reader lose if this part were cut?

Common Mistakes with RL.5.5

Labeling the parts one by one

“Stanza 1 is morning. Stanza 2 is noon. Stanza 3 is night.”

Try this: Ask “What does this part do for the whole?” after each one, and accept only answers that mention another part.

Treating the ending as just the last thing

“Then the frogs start singing and it ends.”

Try this: Have students reread the opening right after the ending, then write one sentence on what the ending changes about it.

Practicing only with poems

Explains stanzas well, then stalls on how chapter 3 of a novel fits the book

Try this: Ask the same question of a novel’s chapters and a play’s scenes, with one sequence box per part and what it adds.

Where RL.5.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.4.5Explain how poems, plays and prose differ, using terms like verse, meter and stage directions.
AlongsideRI.5.5Compare how informational texts are organized, such as time order or cause and effect.RL.5.2Use how the parts build to work out the theme.
Comes NextRL.6.5Analyze how one sentence, chapter, scene or stanza develops the theme, setting or plot.

Practice RL.5.5

Quick Check

  1. What time of day is each stanza set in?
  2. What does the speaker believe in the first stanza?
  3. Which line in the last stanza answers the first stanza?

RL.5.5: Other Names

RL.5.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.5

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.