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Common Core ELAKindergartenReading: Literature

RL.K.5: Recognize Storybooks, Poems and Other Texts

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 Kindergarten ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).

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

What RL.K.5 Means in Plain English

Kindergartners sort what they hear into kinds: a storybook has characters and a problem, a poem has short lines, rhymes and a beat. Hearing “Little snail, little snail, leaving a silver trail,” they say poem, and point to the rhyme.

Other kinds join the list during the year, like songs, fairy tales and alphabet books, and a class chart grows with each new one. In 1st grade the big sort is storybooks versus books that give information, after reading many of each (RL.1.5).

RL.K.5 I Can Statements

  • I can tell if a text is a storybook or a poem.
  • I can hear the rhyming words in a poem.
  • I can name other kinds of things we read, like songs.

RL.K.5 Worked Example

A four-line text written for this page, and two answers to the question of what kind of text it is.

Read the Story
Little snail, little snail,Leaving a silver trail,Up the wall and down the pail,Slow and steady, little snail.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Is this a page from a storybook, or is it a poem? How do you know?
Not Yet“A storybook, because it has a snail in it.”Storybooks and poems can both be about animals. The answer looks at what the text is about, not at how it is made.
Meets the Standard“A poem. The lines are short, snail and trail and pail rhyme, and it has a beat like a song.”It names the kind of text and gives features you can see and hear: short lines, rhymes and a beat.
Question Stems to Use
Is this a storybook or a poem?How do you know?Which words rhyme?Does it have characters with a problem?Where have you heard a text like this before?

Common Mistakes with RL.K.5

Sorting by topic instead of form

“It’s a storybook because it’s about a snail.”

Try this: Read a snail story and the snail poem back to back, and ask what is different besides the snail.

Thinking every poem must rhyme

“That’s not a poem, it doesn’t rhyme!”

Try this: Share one short poem that doesn’t rhyme, and point to the other clues: short lines, white space and a beat you can clap.

Calling every book a storybook

A book of frog facts filed as “a story about frogs”

Try this: Keep a class chart of kinds of texts with one cover pasted beside each, and add a kind whenever a new one appears.

Where RL.K.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.K.10Join in when the class reads stories and poems together.
AlongsideRF.K.2Hear and make rhymes, often the first clue that a text is a poem.RI.K.5Find the front cover, back cover and title page of a book.
Comes NextRL.1.5Explain how books that tell stories differ from books that give information.

Practice RL.K.5

Quick Check

  1. Name two words that rhyme in the snail poem.
  2. Is the snail text a storybook or a poem?
  3. Name one way a storybook is different from a poem.

RL.K.5: Other Names

RL.K.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.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.