1st Grade · English Language Arts · Parent guide
Short answer. RL.1.7 asks first graders to use a story's pictures and details to describe its characters, setting, and events. What it means, plus ways to practice tonight.
Quick answer
Good news: the skill schools call RL.1.7 is one your child probably practices every night without knowing it. It asks her to use a book's illustrations along with the words to describe characters, setting, and events. Pictures in first grade books are not decoration, they carry real story information, and this standard makes sure she is reading them, not just admiring them.
Why parents see this skill
Illustrations let kids comprehend stories richer than their decoding level, which keeps reading rewarding during the slow-decoding months. Learning to combine picture clues with word clues is also the same move she will later make with charts, diagrams, and maps in nonfiction.
For reference
Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.Official Common Core source
See it, then try it
You do not need a lesson plan. Look for these signs in ordinary play, reading, and conversation, then choose one short activity.
Before reading a new book, flip through the pictures only and have her predict the story: who's in it, where it happens, what goes wrong. Then read to check her predictions. This is a classroom classic because it works, and it takes five minutes.
After a page, ask: "What did the picture tell us that the words didn't?" Maybe the words say the girl left, but the picture shows she forgot her umbrella. One question per book is enough to build the habit.
Read one page with your hand over the illustration, and have her describe what she thinks the picture shows. Then reveal it and compare. Sometimes she will be dead on, sometimes the artist surprises you both, and either way she is linking words to images.
Choose what helps today
Start with the domain guide for context, use the learning library when a concept needs explaining, or print a page when your child is ready to practice.
See every RL.1 skill in order and how the codes fit together.
Open resourceFilter free pages by literacy, phonics, handwriting, and comprehension skills.
Open resourceShort, repeatable reading activities for common early words.
Open resourceSimple reading and vocabulary ideas for home and classroom routines.
Open resourceIsn't relying on pictures a bad habit? I heard kids should sound out words, not guess from pictures.
Two different jobs are getting mixed up. For decoding a specific word, yes, the letters should do the work. But for comprehending the story, using illustrations is not a crutch, it is the actual standard, because authors and illustrators put story information in the art on purpose. Sound out with letters, understand with everything.
How will her teacher measure something like this?
Usually by asking questions during a read-aloud that can only be answered from the illustrations: "How does the boy feel here? How do you know?" If a child points to the drooping shoulders in the picture, that is the standard, demonstrated. Some teachers also have kids describe a character using both a sentence from the text and a detail from the art.
Keep the sequence
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