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    Close Reading Model Lessons

    These close reading lessons all focus on texts of appropriate complexity for the grade. The series of questions and tasks included are meant to serve as examples of the kinds of activities that can be built into lessons to foster the skills necessary for students to engage deeply with texts and improve reading comprehension. The resources below explain what makes a text appropriately complex and how to identify and create text-dependent and text-specific questions that deepen student understanding.

  • What Makes a Text Complex

    Standards that prepare students for the reading they will need to do in college or in careers set expectations for the complexity of texts students need to be able to read. To choose texts that are on grade level, follow three steps:

    1. Use quantitative measures to assign a text to a grade band.
    2. Use qualitative measures to locate a text within a specific grade band.
    3. Use professional judgment to decide how suited a text is for a specific instructional purpose with a particular set of students.

    The Text Complexity Collection includes research to support understanding of why text complexity matters and tools designed to guide text complexity analyses.

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  • Creating Text-Dependent Questions

    College- and career-ready standards, including the CCSS, expect students to use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. One critical way to help students develop these skills is through the use of text-dependent questions: questions that can only be answered by referring back to the text.

    The Text-Dependent Question Resources include tools to help write and evaluate text-dependent questions, as well as a link to lesson materials featuring sequences of text -dependent questions meant to deepen student understanding of the text.

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  • Highlighted Aspects of the Shifts

    All of the lessons presented on achievethecore.org are designed to highlight one or more aspects of the ELA/literacy Shifts. The Close Reading Model Lessons particularly emphasize:

    Complexity: Regular practice with complex text and its academic language
    Evidence: Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational

    Learn more about the ELA/literacy Shifts.

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