#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat on Tuesday 3/19 Topic: Close Reading & Text Annotation

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven, & Lisa Spangler, Mrs. Spangler in the Middle, host #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group, even if you aren't on Twitter. 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

On Tuesday, March 19, our #2ndaryELA chat will be about close reading and text annotation.

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “Latest.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

You can also check out a quick video tutorial in this blog post.

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening and in our 2ndaryELA Facebook group!

Get caught up on past chats here:

Teaching Close Reading & Text Annotation Skills

It's nothing fancy. If your students are rereading a text to gain better understand and deeper meaning, they are doing a close reading. This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about teaching close reading and text annotation. Middle school and high school English Language Arts teachers discussed how they define close reading. Teachers also shared how they select the texts they use for close reading and annotation.

Read through the chat below to find out how to teach your students to annotate a text. You'll get ideas about different annotation methods and symbols.

Hope you'll join us next week for another chat. We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group (even if you aren't on Twitter). 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Close Reading & Text Annotation

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog host #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group, even if you aren't on Twitter. 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

On Tuesday, October 17, our #2ndaryELA chat will be about close reading and text annotation.

The Format:
8:00 – What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: What does “close reading” mean in your classroom? #2ndaryELA
8:10 Q2: What types of texts do you ask students to do a close reading of? For what purpose? #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q3: How do you teach text annotation to your students? #2ndaryELA
8:20 Q4: Do you have a standardized method of annotation or do you allow students to develop their own? #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q5: For what types of assignments do you require text annotation? How do you grade these assignments? #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “Latest.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

You can also check out a quick video tutorial in this blog post.

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening and in our 2ndaryELA Facebook group!

Get caught up on past chats here:

Text Based Drawings: A Creative Way to Get Students to Use Evidence from the Text

Asking students to cite evidence for every single question they answer when reading and responding to a text might be good practice and ensure that they are reading closely, but it also becomes repetitive. One way to mix things up is to ask students to draw a picture and label it based on details from the text.  

For example, as my students did a close reading of a passage from Chapter 1 of Of Mice and Men, they looked for the differences between the two main characters, George and Lennie. 

They used one color/symbol for George and another color/symbol for Lennie. Lots of students busted out their highlighter collection or colored pencils, but underlining, circling, starring, etc. works too. On a second read of the passage, students looked for language that compared the characters to animals and marked that with a third color/symbol.

One of the after reading activities was to draw and label a picture of Lennie using details from the text. Students had already identified these details in their close reading, but drawing Lennie helped students to better visualize what this character looks like and how he behaves. It was also a creative way of getting students to pull evidence from the text without just having them write.

As we continued reading Of Mice and Men, we did another close reading of the text, this time focused on a scene where Curley's wife is introduced in into Chapter 2. After reading, students drew and labeled a picture of her using details from the text.

This hands-on activity will engage your visual learners and even non-artistic students will love comparing their drawings with others. A slight variation of this activity would be to make copies of the page or pages that you would like students to pull evidence from. Students could then cut out the details describing the character, setting, etc. and glue it onto their drawing.

You can find all of my Of Mice and Men resources, including the activities and close readings described above, here.

On My Bookshelf: Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

The basic plot from Amazon: My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.
 
But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.

Why I liked it: While parts of the plot of Everything, Everything were a stretch for me (Madeline is totally cut off from the world because of her illness, but doesn't have an inkling that there isn't actually anything wrong with her despite the fact that she is never sick), the whirlwind romance between Maddy and Olly is one to which any teenager who has ever been in love can relate. 

The two are immediately attracted to each other and once they finally meet in person, they can't get

enough of each other. Both characters are struggling with controlling parents. Olly's father is an abusive alcoholic and Maddy's mother is afraid of losing her because of her illness as she has already lost her husband and son in a terrible car accident. Throughout the novel Maddy and Olly push each other to do more, be better, but are also extremely caring and protective. Their relationship (except for one sexy scene) is sweet and innocent.


My favorite character in the book is Carla, who has cared for Madeline for most of her life. Carla has Maddy's best interests at heart and wants to see her happy, which is why she goes behind Maddy's mother's back to bring Olly into the house.  She also suspects that Madeline might not really be sick and helps her to investigate once Maddy come to the same realization..

Classroom application: Throughout the book are Maddy's "spoiler alerts," funny one to two line summaries of famous books that she has read. Ask students to write their own about Everything, Everything or for other books, short stories, etc. that they've read recently. Students will not only practice the skill of summarizing, but the short length will make them focus on word choice as well.

For after reading projects, students could research SCID, the disease from which Maddy supposedly suffers, or create an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system like the one Olly has on his roof. Researching SCID could be part of a cross-curricular science unit on strange chronic illnesses, and creating an orrery would require both science and mathematical knowledge.

The novel would be a good pairing with other texts that deal with love against the odds and/or serious illness like Romeo and Juliet, The Fault in Our Stars, or Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Everything, Everything for yourself, you can find it on Amazon here.

Note: The Literary Maven is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Close Reading & Text Annotation

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog host #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last night and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

New in 2016 is our 2ndaryELA Facebook group, which we would love to have you join even if you aren't on Twitter. 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction.

On Tuesday, October 18, our #2ndaryELA chat will be about close reading and text annotation.

The Format:
8:00 Intros: What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: What does “close reading” mean in your classroom? #2ndaryELA
8:10 Q2: What types of texts do you ask students to do a close reading of? For what purpose? #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q3: How do you teach text annotation to your students? #2ndaryELA
8:20 Q4: Do you have a standardized method of annotation or so you allow students to develop their own? #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q5: For what types of assignments do you require text annotation? How do you grade these assignments? #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “All tweets.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening and in our 2ndaryELA Facebook group!

Get caught up on past chats here:

'Tis The Season: Four Tips for ELA Teachers to Navigate the Holidays

The holiday season is hectic for everyone, but maybe even more so for teachers.

We want to wrap things up neatly before the holidays so that we can start fresh when we can return in January; no papers or projects hanging over into the new year. We are in a frenzy to finish up grading before we head home to the holidays or we are collecting a mountain of assignments to be graded as we sip hot cocoa in front of the fireplace.

Read on to find ideas for engaging lessons in the final days before winter break, a meaningful gift exchange for students, and easy gifts for you to give.

Fun Fall Finds: Resources for the Secondary ELA Classroom

The fall can be a daunting time in the classroom. The weather is getting cooler and the days are getting darker. The excitement of back to school has ended and the "honeymoon" phase with your students is over too. Their behavior is less than perfect, they are starting to get chatty, and winter vacation seems so far away. You can bring some excitement back into your classroom and re-engage your students by recognizing some of the smaller holidays or events in between now and Christmas break, such as Halloween, Daylight Savings, and Election Day. If your school frowns upon recognizing holidays of any kind, you can also bring some spookiness into your classroom with a lesson or two or even a unit on Edgar Allan Poe (one of my favorite authors!) combining fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and argument writing.

Increasing the amount of nonfiction you use in your classroom can be a challenge, especially if your school is still using textbooks predominantly filled with literature. Seasonal nonfiction close readings are an easy way to incorporate nonfiction texts that your students will actually be interested in reading. Rigorous articles from sources such as The New York Times and National Public Radio are paired with ten questions aligned with the Informational Common Core standards. Suggested after reading activities make connections with math, science, history, and more. Check out my seasonal nonfiction close readings on the history of Halloween, why Daylight Savings makes no sense, and why Election Day is always a Tuesday. You can read about how one secondary English teacher uses my seasonal nonfiction readings in her classroom here. Look for readings on Thanksgiving and Pearl Harbor Day coming soon.

If incorporating the holidays into your classroom is against school policy or just inconsiderate due to students' different religious backgrounds, considering spreading the scary spirit with author Edgar Allan Poe. It would be difficult for me to chose a favorite Poe short story, but "The Black Cat" is definitely one of them. I mean, who doesn't love a drunk guy who goes crazy and stabs his cat in the eye for ignoring him?! I use an adapted version of the short story to make it accessible for all levels of students. It's an excellent text for discussing the reliability (or unreliability) of a first person narrator.  

Like Poe's short stories, I don't think I could pick just one Poe poem to teach, but "The Raven" is the one I use this time of year. After doing a close reading with my students, we compare the original text with The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episode in which Homer is haunted by Bart in bird form. Like "The Black Cat," it is a great text for evaluating the reliability of a narrator; students respond to a constructed response prompt on the topic. Another possible constructed prompt is examining how the setting creates mood in the poem. I also like to focus on summarizing with "The Raven" and ask students to write both a written summary and create a cartoon strip form of the poem.

After introducing students to some of Poe's colorful characters, I keep their interest piqued with a series of nonfiction readings on the different possible causes of Poe's death, culminating with an argument essay in which students must select and defend a view point. A highly structured, step-by-step essay writing guide supports even my lowest level writers. During the writing process, I also use a choice board of activities which students complete independently while I work with small groups on their essays. Students are engaged in options such as writing an acrostic poem like the one written to Poe by his wife or creating a timeline of major events in Poe's life, while I assist struggling students with outlining the argument of their essay.

Thinking About Going Back To School: My First Lesson in the ELA Classroom

I used to begin each year with short stories and teach basic literary terms: plot, setting, mood, character, tone, voice, point of view, etc. The short stories were classics, ones that the students and I both enjoyed, such as “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, “Thank You Ma’am” by Langston Hughes, and “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe. There was nothing wrong with what I was doing. It worked.

But then last summer, I attended the Philadelphia Writing Project, part of the National Writing Project. One of the key texts we read was Teaching for Joy and Justice by Linda Christensen (which I highly recommend) and it go me to thinking, what am I teaching for? Am I teaching so that students will learn these literary terms? Will it matter ten or twenty years from now if they can define tone? Am I teaching so that students will know the classics? Will it matter ten or twenty years from now if students read all 26 pages of “The Most Dangerous Game?”

I decided that the answer to both was no. I was teaching so that students could develop into strong, confident readers and writers and be prepared for whatever might be ahead of them in life. And as a ninth grade teacher, I was teaching so that my students would be engaged, so they would want to and continue to come to school (research shows that ninth grade is a pivotal year for success in and graduation from high school and I primarily teach ninth grade).

So last year I decided to begin the year with a writer’s workshop using coming of age poetry as mentor texts. In a writer’s workshop, students write on a topic of their choosing with heavy emphasis on the revision process. Coming of age is a relevant, high interest topic for 14 and 15 year olds, and poetry is a shorter, more accessible text. Struggling readers are not immediately turned off and its length lends itself to multiple readings, annotation, and close readings. I teach students who read three or four or sometimes five levels below their grade level so I don’t want them to shut down before I can begin to build their skills and confidence as readers.

The two poems I chose to use in this unit were "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde and "What For" by Garrett Longo. "Hanging Fire" is one of my all time favorite poems to use with ninth graders, especially African American girls, because the content is so relatable for them. "What For" is a very different perspective (six year old, Hawaiian narrator) but has great imagery. As students do a close reading of and annotate each poem, we discuss the poet's use of repetition, imagery, strong verbs, and specific nouns. As mentor texts, both of these poems include all of the elements we discussed and that I eventually asked students to include in their own writing.

After reading, the fun began! We brainstormed different age-related memories, first independently and then shared them whole class to spark students who might be struggling with ideas. Students selected their best ideas from their lists and began drafting their poems. I asked my students to complete their drafts for homework, but this year I will give them more time in class to work on it to ensure that all students have a draft to bring to the read-around the next day.

A read-around is just what it sounds like. Students sit in a circle and go around the circle reading their writing as other students give them feedback. Ideally every student will share what they have written, but last year I had many students who didn't because they were nervous or unprepared. You can allow students to select someone else to read their poem for them if that makes them more comfortable. You may need to model the type of feedback you would like students to give so that the comments are meaningful. Based on this feedback from peers, students then complete another draft of their poem. Often they hear interesting or effective things their peers have done in their poem and want to emulate some of those techniques. The read-around is just as much about being heard as it is about hearing others.


Finally, students complete a final draft of their poem. Students are graded based on their inclusion of the elements focused on in the mentor texts: repetition, imagery, strong verbs, and specific nouns. If students have all of these elements, they receive full credit and if they do not, they rework their poem until they do. If this sounds like I am going "too easy" on the students, remember what I'm teaching for. I'm teaching for my students to become strong, confident readers and writers and for engaging my students in learning. You can check out this lesson in full here.

I'd love to hear what you are thinking about starting the year with. Leave a comment and share what your first lesson will be and why.

For more Back to School ideas and resources:

You Oughta Know About...Designing a Close Reading

Close reading is not a new strategy, but seems to be a buzz word these days thanks to the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers). If you think close readings aren't essential practice in any subject, think again. According to the PARCC, "a significant body of research links the close reading of complex text—whether the student is a struggling reader or advanced—to significant gains in reading proficiency and finds close reading to be a key component of college and career readiness."

So now you are freaking out because the PARCC is endorsing close readings (and they pretty much run the education world these days, along with Charlotte Danielson) and you aren't doing them and you aren't even sure you know how. Relax. All will be well. I will explain everything you oughta know about designing a close reading.

The first step to designing a close read is to pick a short, rich text. It could be a non-fiction article, a short story, a poem, or a page or two from a novel. It could even be a graphic or info graphic. The genre and type of text don't matter as long as the length is manageable, a page or two would be my recommendation, although there is probably a more specific research based length.

Even more important than keeping it short is the depth of the text. How do you know if the text is deep enough? The PARCC tells us students should be "engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly and examining meaning thoroughly and methodically, reading and rereading deliberately. This attention to the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details. It also enables students to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas over the course of the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole." 

To break that down, consider the following questions: Would students gain better understanding and greater meaning from reading the text multiple times? Are there multiple possible interpretations of statements made by the author? Is there challenging vocabulary students would have to use context clues to determine the meaning of?  Can students identify a series of causes and effects? Are there enough details for students to determine a theme? Will students be able to make inferences or draw conclusions based on character description? Can the author's word choice be examined for meaning and purpose? For me, it's bonus points if the text sparks conversation or debate among students or leaves them wondering. If you aren't answering yes to many of those questions, then the text you are looking at probably isn't worth a close read.

Once I have selected a text worthy of a close reading, I think about the text-dependent questions I will ask that will require students to dig deeply into the text. Using an excerpt from "The Family of Little Feet," a vignette from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, I will first give some examples of questions that don't require true close reading or critical thinking (some non-examples) and then examples of questions that do.

Excerpt:

Do you want this? And gave us a paper bag with one pair of lemon shoes and one red and one pair of dancing shoes that used to be white but were now pale blue. Here, and we said thank you and waited until she went upstairs.

Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit exactly, and we laugh at Rachel's one foot with a girl's grey sock and a lady's high heel. Do you like these shoes? But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg.

Everybody wants to trade. The lemon shoes for the red shoes, the red for the pair that were once white but are now pale blue, the pale blue for the lemon, and take them off and put them back on and keep on like this a long time until we are tired.

Then Lucy screams to take our socks off and yes, it's true. We have legs. Skinny and spotted with satin scars where scabs were picked, but legs, all our own, good to look at, and long.

It's Rachel who learns to walk the best all strutted in those magic high heels. She teaches us to cross and uncross our legs, and to run like a double-dutch rope, and how to walk down to the corner so that the shoes talk back to you with every step. Lucy, Rachel, me tee-tottering like so. Down to the corner where the men can't take their eyes off us. We must be Christmas.

Non-example questions:

What caused the shoes that used to be white to now be pale blue?

Why are the girls excited?

How is Rachel different from the other girls?

While these are decent questions, requiring students to use comprehension skills and make inferences, they will not generate real discussion and they all have a "right" answer, even those that don't call for direct "facts" from the story. These questions also only touch upon the first three Common Core standards (#1 citing evidence/making inferences, #2 main idea/theme, #3 character development), all of which fall under the category of "key ideas and details."

Example questions:

What does the narrator mean when she says, "today we are Cinderella?" How would the meaning change if she said, "today we are Snow White" or "today we are Sleeping Beauty?" 

(standard #4 and #9, author's word choice and connecting ideas/themes between texts)

Why does the author decide to include the information that the shoes are a gift from a neighbor? Would the shoes have the same effect on the girls if they were already theirs? 

(standard #5 text structure)

How does the girls' view of themselves change when they put on the "magic high heels?" What evidence in the text supports this change? 

(standard #6 point of view)

These questions will generate discussion and have no one "right" answer as long as students can logically support their response with evidence from the text. These questions hit upon higher level Common Core standards with standards 4 - 6 falling under "craft and structure" and standard 9 falling under "integration of knowledge and ideas."

Want to read more about close reading and see more sample questions? Check out this article.

If you are a secondary teacher, check out my seasonal nonfiction close readings. Many of them could be used in a history class or even science class! My close reading on giving and the holidays is free, so grab it for next year or use the questions as a model for your own nonfiction close reading.

I also just posted these close readings for Of Mice and Men. If you are looking for an example of a literary close reading, click here to download one for Chapter One.

If you are an elementary school teacher, check out this post by Miss DeCarbo at Sugar and Spice. You can see some examples in her post and and follow her directions to download a free sample.