PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Common Core Standards: Text
Complexity, cont. from page 11
•Note and assess patterns of writing and what
they achieve.
•Consider what the text leaves uncertain or
unstated.
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 move 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.
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.
Resources
For more information and resources about Common Core
Standards, visit the AEA website at www.arizonaea.org.
For more information and resources about text complexity, visit www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/
text-complexity
Step One: Identify the Core
Understandings and Key Ideas of
the Text
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.
Step Two: Start Small to Build
Confidence
The opening questions should help orient
students to the text and are sufficiently specific
for students to answer and gain confidence to
tackle more difficult questions.
Step Three: Target Vocabulary and
Text Structure
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.
Step Four: Tackle Tough Sections
Head-on
Find the sections of the text that will present
the greatest difficulty and craft questions that
support students in mastering these sections
Defining "Deep Reading" and "Text-Dependent
Questions" at turnonyourbrain.wordpress.com/2012/
03/29/defining-deep-reading-and-text-dependentquestions.
Summer.13advo.indd 12
12 Summer 2013 x AEA Advocate
3/18/13 12:03 PM
