These lessons can be used immediately in the classroom and for professional development. Learn how to create your own standards-aligned lessons using high quality trade books, or train educators in your district.
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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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Tier 2 (academic vocabulary) words appear in many different contexts and are often subtle or precise ways to say relatively simple things, for example “relative” or “accumulate". Since these aren't words that will typically be used in a student's conversations and they aren't domain-specific, they should be given more focus than Tier 1 and Tier 3 vocabulary.
The Academic Word Finder pulls the most useful academic vocabulary words from a given text - those that are not too common and not too rare. There may be other academic vocabulary words the tool does not highlight that a teacher determines are important to the text. This tool doesn't replace teacher judgment; rather it helps to support the teacher in identifying which academic words to consider first. Teachers also must gauge what words are most effective for their students' current vocabulary levels.
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ELA / Literacy Lessons > Read Aloud Project
Read Aloud Project
The Read Aloud Project offers lessons for K–2 read aloud books that have been adapted to meet the expectations of college- and career-ready standards. Hundreds of teachers worked collaboratively to develop these materials. Each lesson was authored, edited, and reviewed by a team of expert educators.
These lessons emphasize key aspects of college- and career-ready standards, including quality sequenced text-dependent questions, improved speaking, listening and writing tasks, and a focus on academic vocabulary. The resources below explain how to identify and create text-dependent and text-specific questions that deepen student understanding and how to recognize academic vocabulary.