TEACHING+TO+READING+STANDARDS

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= Text Dependent Questions =

**__ A Guide to Creating Text Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading __**
http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions ** Text Dependent Questions: What Are They? **

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. For example, in a close analytic reading of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” the following would not be text dependent questions The overarching problem with these questions is that they require no familiarity at all with Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them. Responding to these sorts of questions instead requires students to go outside the text. Such questions can be tempting to ask because they are likely to get students talking, but they take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is making. They seek to elicit a personal or general response that relies on individual experience and opinion, and answering them will not move students closer to understanding the text of the “Gettysburg Address.”
 *  Why did the North fight the civil war?
 * Have you ever been to a funeral or gravesite?
 * Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important value to promote?

Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:
 * Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words
 * Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another
 * Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole
 * Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts
 * Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do
 * Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve
 * Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated

= Creating Text-Dependent Questions =

**Creating Text-Dependent Questions** **for Close Analytic Reading of Texts**
An effective set of text dependent questions delves systematically into a text to guide students in extracting the key meanings or ideas found there. They typically begin by exploring specific words, details, and arguments and then moves on to examine the impact of those specifics on the text as a whole. Along the way they target academic vocabulary and specific sentence structures as critical focus points for gaining comprehension.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">While there is no set process for generating a complete and coherent body of text dependent questions for a text, the following process is a good guide that can serve to generate a core series of questions for close reading of any given text.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step One: Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As in any good reverse engineering or “backwards design” process, teachers should start by identifying the key insights they want students to understand from the text—keeping one eye on the major points being made is crucial for fashioning an overarching set of successful questions and critical for creating an appropriate culminating assignment.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step Two: Start Small to Build Confidence:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The opening questions should be ones that help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently specific enough for them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions later on.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step Three: Target Vocabulary and Text Structure:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Locate key text structures and the most powerful academic words in the text that are connected to the key ideas and understandings, and craft questions that illuminate these connections.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step Four: Tackle Tough Sections Head-on:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Find the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that support students in mastering these sections (these could be sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step File: Create Coherent Sequences of Text Dependent Questions:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The sequence of questions should not be random but should build toward more coherent understanding and analysis to ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them to a gradual understanding of its meaning.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Take stock of what standards are being addressed in the series of questions and decide if any other standards are suited to being a focus for this text (forming additional questions that exercise those standards).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Step Seven: Create the Culminating Assessment:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Develop a culminating activity around the key ideas or understandings identified earlier that reflects (a) mastery of one or more of the standards, (b) involves writing, and (c) is structured to be completed by students independently.

= S.O.A.P.S. FOR CLOSE READING = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">SOAPS is an acronym for questioning that leads a reader beyond comprehending the literal meaning of a text and allows the reader to make some inferences about he speaker, the audience, etc. SOAPS can be quite effectively used to have students consider historical texts before the teacher provides extensive background knowledge about the historical context or milieu. To make this point, the PowerPoint document below offers three historical speeches for consideration.



= STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING QUESTIONING =

QAR
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">One of the repeated themes in the Common Core Standards is the power of embedded questions. However, in the classroom we all know who does all the asking of questions--the teachers. But students must become questioners if they are going to become analytical readers. They will not always have a guide at their side leading their thinking about text structure or author's purpose. The documents that follow draw on research based strategies to build questioning skills. They also reference suggested texts as noted in the Common Core Appendix A.



= STRATEGIES FOR FINDING THE MAIN IDEA = 

The Rule Strategy
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Another of the recurrent terms in the Common Core is that of summarizing. The first mention of summarizing comes in grade four and summary is explicitly referenced in every grade thereafter. Like all important literacy skills, the ability to summarize is not only important to reading, but also to writing. Writers often summarizing when offering explanations, when reflecting on events or feelings. The ability to summarize is an essential skill. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">

= TEMPLATE & STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING CORNELL NOTES = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The Cornell method provides a systematic format for condensing and organizing notes. The student divides the paper into two columns: the note-taking column (usually on the right) is twice the size of the questions/key word column (on the left). The student should leave five to seven lines, or about two inches, at the bottom of the page. Notes from a lecture or teaching are written in the note-taking column; notes usually consist of the main ideas of the text or lecture, and long ideas are paraphrased. Long sentences are avoided; symbols or abbreviations are used instead. To assist with future reviews, relevant questions (which should be recorded as soon as possible so that the lecture and questions will be fresh in the student's mind) or key words are written in the key word column. These notes can be taken from any source of information, such as fiction and nonfiction books, DVDs, lectures, text books, etc. A study published in 2008 by Wichita State University compared two note taking methods in a secondary English classroom, and found that Cornell Note taking may be of added benefit in cases where students are required to synthesize and apply learned knowledge, while the [|guided notes method] appeared to be better for basic recall.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">

= STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING VOCABULARY SKILLS = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Common Core Standard s all about vocabulary. Beginning in grade 6, Standard #4 expects students to to use context clues to derive meaning from novel language, academic language, literal language, and figurative <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> language. Although educators often talk to students about using context clues, we often do not explicitly explain where those clues may and may not be found.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">

= STRATEGIES FOR UNDERSTANDING TEXT STRUCTURE = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">How can a reader tell a the difference between a text structured by causality and a text structured by chronology? An analysis of transitions used by the author is a significant key to determining text structures.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">** Text Dependent Questions: What Are They? **

= GRAPHIC ORGANIZER FOR COMPARISON AND CONTRAST = <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">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. <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">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. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">For example, in a close analytic reading of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” the following would not be text dependent questions: <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · // Why did the North fight the civil war? // <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · // Have you ever been to a funeral or gravesite? // <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · // Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important value to promote? // <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">The overarching problem with these questions is that they require no familiarity at all with Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them. Responding to these sorts of questions instead requires students to go outside the text. Such questions can be tempting to ask because they are likely to get students talking, but they take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is making. They seek to elicit a personal or general response that relies on individual experience and opinion, and answering them will not move students closer to understanding the text of the “Gettysburg Address.” <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 1400px; width: 1px;">Good text dependent questions will often linger over specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more cursory reading. Typical text dependent questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks: <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Analyze paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or words <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Investigate how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have chosen one word over another <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Probe each argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Examine how shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the impact of those shifts <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Question why authors choose to begin and end when they do <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Note and assess patterns of writing and what they achieve <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: 1px; left: -40px; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; text-indent: -0.25in; top: 1400px; width: 1px;"> · Consider what the text leaves uncertain or unstated