"The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat" by Michael Pollan with mini-assessment

Authors: Kerry Powers, Knowledge-Building Resources for Middle and High School Development Team

  • Description
  • Files

Two-day series of sample lessons includes: 

  • Text dependent questions
  • Student discussion activities
  • Vocabulary and syntax tasks 
  • Annotations for teachers 
  • CCSS-aligned mini-assessment

The knowledge-building resources follow a quad text set model developed by Comprehensive Reading Solutions and based on the article by Sarah Lupo and colleagues, “Building Background Knowledge Through Reading: Rethinking Text Sets.” In a quad text set model, three to five texts are selected that help students develop knowledge critical to the complex text at the center of the close-reading lesson. Each of these supplemental texts is paired with a lightweight text-dependent task to support students’ comprehension and knowledge-building work. Implementing these knowledge-building texts and tasks can be done in a variety of ways; they are lightweight enough to be done either during short portions of class or as homework. This work is particularly critical for students not yet reading at grade level.

  • The Omnivore's Dilemma

  • Mini-assessment for Omnivore's Dilemma

    PDF Version

    Digital Version

    The digital version is available through edcite.com.

  • Building Knowledge with a Close-Reading Lesson The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Supplemental Resources