A Guide to
Creating Text Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading
Text Dependent Questions:
What Are They?
The Common Core State Standards for reading strongly focus
on students gathering evidence, knowledge, and insight from what they read.
Eighty to ninety percent of the Reading Standards in each grade require text dependent analysis;
accordingly, aligned curriculum materials should have a similar percentage of
text dependent questions.
As the name suggests, a
text dependent question specifically asks a question that can only be answered
by referring explicitly back to the text being read. It does not rely on any particular
background information extraneous to the text nor depend on students having
other experiences or knowledge; instead it privileges the text itself and what
students can extract from what is before them.
For example, in a close analytic reading of Lincoln’s
“Gettysburg Address,” the following would NOT
be text dependent questions:
·
Why did the North fight the civil war?
·
Have you ever been to a funeral or
gravesite?
·
Lincoln says that the nation is dedicated to
the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Why is equality an important
value to promote?
The overarching problem with these questions is that they require no familiarity at all with
Lincoln’s speech in order to answer them. Responding to these sorts of
questions instead requires students to go outside the text. Such questions can
be tempting to ask because they are likely to get students talking, but they
take students away from considering the actual point Lincoln is making. They seek to elicit a personal or general
response that relies on individual experience and opinion, and answering them will not move students closer
to understanding the text of the “Gettysburg Address.”
*Good text dependent questions will often linger over
specific phrases and sentences to ensure careful comprehension of the text—they
help students see something worthwhile that they would not have seen on a more
cursory reading. Typical text dependent
questions ask students to perform one or more of the following tasks:
- ·
Analyze
paragraphs on a sentence by sentence basis and sentences on a word by word
basis to determine the role played by individual paragraphs, sentences,
phrases, or words
- ·
Investigate
how meaning can be altered by changing key words and why an author may have
chosen one word over another
- ·
Probe each
argument in persuasive text, each idea in informational text, each key detail
in literary text, and observe how these build to a whole
- ·
Examine how
shifts in the direction of an argument or explanation are achieved and the
impact of those shifts
- ·
Question
why authors choose to begin and end when they do
- ·
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 moves 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.
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 be ones that
help orientate students to the text and be sufficiently specific enough for
them to answer so that they gain confidence to tackle more difficult questions
later on.
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 (these could be
sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky
transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences).
Step Five: Create Coherent
Sequences of Text Dependent Questions
The sequence of questions should not be
random but should build toward more coherent understanding and analysis to
ensure that students learn to stay focused on the text to bring them to a
gradual understanding of its meaning.
Step
Six: Identify the Standards That Are Being Addressed
Take stock of what standards are being
addressed in the series of questions and decide if any other standards are
suited to being a focus for this text (forming additional questions that
exercise those standards).
Step Seven: Create the
Culminating Assessment
Develop
a culminating activity around the key ideas or understandings identified
earlier that reflects (a) mastery of one or more of the standards, (b) involves
writing, and (c) is structured to be completed by students independently.
**This is an interpretation and guide of Shift 4 of the Common Core State Standards.
All material and commentary is from the authors of engageny.org, also found on
achievethecore.org
