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.

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.

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.

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.

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 modern fable and play, The Baker's Neighbor. In this play, the neighborhood baker Manuel bakes delicious smelling pastries and puts them out for sale each morning, but his neighbor, Pablo, loves to smell the fresh bakery every morning without purchasing any pastries. This irritates Manuel to the point where he feels Pable should pay to smell his baked goods, and Manuel takes his complain to the town judge who eventually offers a ruling that allows Manuel to get the pleasure of "touching" Pablo's gold coins in return for Pable "smelling" the bakery.

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 Blue Willow. Janey's father is an immigrant worker and this forces Janey and her family to move around every few months, but Janey finds a friend named Lupe and a place she would like to call home permanently. Janey has to go to Camp Miller School for immigrant children like herself and she finds once again she must learn whether the new teacher will be a friend or just another teacher like the ones before her.

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 biographical text, Boss of the Plains. This biography relates the life of John Batterson Stetson as a hatting apprentice until he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to explore the American West. During his time with the people of the West, he invents a better hat, nicknamed "Boss of the Plains," - the first real cowboy hat.

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 fictional text The Bridge Dancers. In this book, two sisters, Maisie and Callie, are faced with a challenging situation. Callie gets hurt while their mother is away and Maisie must decide if she can rely on her knowledge of herbal medicine to save her sister's life.

This assessment task will be completed in two parts and focuses on the informational text, "My Librarian is a Camel." The prewriting/planning in part one involves reading, plus note-taking and speaking and listening in response to text-dependent questions. In part two, students are asked to write an opinion piece.

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.

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.

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.

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 series of poems, Danitra Brown Leaves Town. Danitra and Zuri are two city-girls and best friends, and Danitra goes away to her auntĺ䁥_s house for the summer. These poems tell a story about how the girls stayed in touch by writing letters to each other, and how they discovered that they could have fun apart from one another while still remaining friends.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and other CCSS instructional shifts to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the text Dear Mrs. LaRue. Mrs. LaRue sends her dog, Ike, to obedience school because of a series of inappropriate behaviors that he displays toward everyone. Ike feels he has been wrongly sent to the school and writes letters to explain his perspective on what actually happened in each situation, trying to persuade Ms. LaRue to come and get him.

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

The goal of this five-day exemplar is to explicitly model the process of searching for and interpreting intra-textual connections. In this lesson sequence, the teacher poses an analytic focusing question and then guides students in gathering and interpreting evidence from the text in order to come to a deeper understanding of the story. Simple word play and art activities give students practice in closely attending to language and word choice, and in visualizing and recording their interpretations. Discussion and a short writing exercise help students to synthesize what they have learned.

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.