Cendrillon

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the modern fairytale, Cendrillon. In this Caribbean Cinderella story, Cendrillon is treated as a servant by her step-mother and half-sister. Nannin, the gogmother, uses a magic wand to ready Cendrillon for a ball, where Cendrillon meets a rich man's son, Paul, who falls in love with her and finds her when she is lost to him.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Robert D. San Souci

Charlotte's Web

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the children's novel, Charlotte's Web. A story of friendship and loyalty between Wilbur, a spring pic and a grey spider named Charlotte. Wilbur learns that he is being fattened for slaughter in the fall. Wilbur is at first disgusted by the fact that charlotte eats flies, but comes to both appreciate and love her.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: E.B. White

Across the Wide Dark Sea

A boy and his family endure a difficult nine-week journey across the ocean and survive the first winter at Plymouth. Based on true events, "Across the Wide Dark Sea" poetically narrates a young boy's account of risking the ocean to find religious freedom in a new land.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Jean Van Leeuwen

The Adventurers

This selection is an informational narrative in the form of a play or Readers' Theater. The play is about a group of boys and girls who are summertime campers at the National Sea Base camp in the Florida Keys. Their adventure includes camping, snorkeling, and sailing aboard the ship. This is a new adventure for the characters in this story.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Author Unknown

Aero and Officer Mike

This nonfiction story is about a partnership between a policeman, Officer Mike, and his partner, a police dog named Aero. Information about daily routine (work and breaks), Aero's special talents and Officer Mike's training and care of Aero is included.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Joan Plummer Russell

Akiak

Akiak is the story of a dog that desires to win the Iditarod with her owner, Mick. Akiak is injured and is disqualified from finishing the race, but she follows Mich and the team of dogs to the finish line. This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Robert J. Blake

Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the text Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride. Pilot Amelia Earhart and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt are good friends and one night, after dinner at the White House, Amelia then offers to take Eleanor on an unforgettable night flight to Baltimore and back in the Curtis Condor twin-motor airplan. By the time they arrive back in Washington D.C., a group of reporters meets them at the airstrip. Eleanor admits to not flying this time, but has every intention to fly in the near future.

Material Type: Lesson Plan, Unit of Study

Author: Pam Munoz Ryan

Strategy Guide: Making the Reading Process Visible Through Performance Assessment

Effective differentiation begins with purposeful assessment. In this strategy guide, you’ll learn how to construct an authentic performance-based reading assessment that will give you access to students’ thinking before, during, and after reading.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Introduction to ELA / Literacy Shifts

This 1-2 hour module provides participants with an introduction to the key shifts required by the Common Core State Standards for ELA / Literacy.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Introduction to Literacy Shifts in Content Areas

This 1-2 hour module provides an introduction to the key shifts required by the CCSS for Literacy in the content areas: history / social studies, science, and technical subjects.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Understanding Text-Dependent Questions

This module is suitable for K-12 ELA / Literacy instructors, as well as teachers of history/social studies, science, and technical subjects.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Using the ELA Literacy Publishers Criteria to Better Understand the Standards

Through close examination of the Publishers’ Criteria in ELA / Literacy for Grades 3-12, this 1-2 hour module intends to give teachers and administrators a deeper understanding of the Standards and their implication for instructional resources. This information will help educators judge classroom materials and reflect on the appropriate use of existing resources and strategies.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Unit of Study

Complete Guide to Creating Text Dependent Questions

Thorough explanation of the how and why of text-dependent questions for close, analytic reading. Includes examples. The Common Core State Standards for reading strongly focus on students gathering evidence, knowledge, and insight from what they read. Indeed, eighty to ninety percent of the Reading Standards in each grade require text dependent analysis; accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of text dependent questions. As the name suggests, a text dependent question specifically asks a question that can only be answered by referring explicitly back to the text being read. It does not rely on any particular background information extraneous to the text nor depend on students having other experiences or knowledge; instead it privileges the text itself and what students can extract from what is before them.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Short Guide to Creating Text-Dependent Questions

Seven simple steps to create your own questions for close analytic reading.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Flows of Reading: Engaging With Texts

While common usage of the word, text, often refers to written or printed matter, literary and cultural theory extends the term to refer to any coherent set of symbols that transmit meaning to those who know how to read them. In an age where ideas may take many forms and be expressed across different media, texts and reading take on new implications.One goal of the Flows of Reading project is to inspire teachers and students to reflect on what can be considered as reading and what kinds of reading they perform in their everyday lives. Flows of Reading introduces an expanded concept of the term, text, and models a new type of readerĺ䁥ŕone who reads across different media and who understands reading as an activity of sharing, deconstructing, and making meaning.We have created a rich environment designed to encourage close critical engagement not only with Moby-Dick but a range of other texts, including the childrenĺ䁥_s picture book, Flotsam; Harry Potter; Hunger Games; and Lord of the Rings. We want to demonstrate that the bookĺ䁥_s approach can be applied to many different kinds of texts and may revitalize how we teach a diversity of forms of human expression.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Authors: Erin Reilly, Henry Jenkins, Ritesh Mehta

Establishing A Purpose For Reading Using Informational Text

In this lesson, before reading, students establish a purpose for reading informational text by turning the title and subtitles into questions.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Accessing Complex Text Through Structured Conversations

In this lesson students use a structured format (an adaptation of Think-Pair-Share) to discuss and deconstruct complex text. The new core standards emphasize the importance of developing students' speaking and listening skills as well as helping them access complex text through reading, re-reading, re-thinking, and re-examining.The purpose of this lesson is to get the students to focus and stay on topic while they talk. As a result, students are required to think more extensively about a topic by repeatedly reading and discussing with others.

Material Type: Lesson Plan

Checklist for Evaluating Question Quality

Clear checklist for evaluating the quality of text-dependent questions.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Mathematics, the Common Core, and Language

This paper makes recommendations for developing mathematics instruction for English Language Learners (ELLs) aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The recommendations can guide teachers, curriculum developers, and teacher educators as they develop their own ways of supporting mathematical reasoning and sense-making for ELLs.Some instructional recommendations discussed in the paper include: Focus on ELL students' mathematical reasoning, not the correctness of their mathematical language use. Shift to a focus on mathematical discourse practices; move away from simplified views of language. Support ELL students as they engage in complex mathematical language. Use ELL students' language and experiences as resources. Provide professional development to enhance teachers' awareness of ways to support ELs as they develop both language and mathematical knowledge.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Judit Moschkovich

Language and the Common Core State Standards

This paper points out three different ways that language is involved in the standards: language requirements in the content standards, English language arts standards, and language-convention-specific standards. It calls for a thoughtful integration of these three dimensions.The authors also frame language in the context of the Common Core, focusing on what students can accomplish using language rather than on whether or how students use specific language features. This broader definition encourages the development of cognitive, linguistic, and affective strengths in ELLs and gives students the opportunity to take valuable actions toward academic success.

Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Leo Van Lier, Aida Walqui