Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading
Selection: Sleds on Boston Common Grade: 5 Unit 11
Initial Planning
Identify the Core Understandings and Key Ideas of the Text
As in any good backward mapping process, teachers should start by identifying the key insights they want students to
understand from the text. Keeping the major points to be made in mind is crucial for crafting an overarching set of successful
questions. This step is also critical for creating a means to check for student understanding.
Identify Lesson Focus: (Review Qualitative Measures)
Knowledge Demands: Exceedingly Complex
Life Experiences – different time period
Intertextuality and Cultural Knowledge – references to historical figures, American history, east coast.
CCSS Focus Standards:
*RL5.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama
respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
*RL5.6: Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.
*RI 5.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
L.5.3, L.5.4., L.5.6.
Content Standards: Social Studies
5.5 Students explain the causes of the American Revolution.
4. Describe the views, lives, and impact of key individuals during this period (e.g., King George III, Patrick
Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams)
5.6
5.6 Students understand the course and consequences of the American Revolution.
4. Understand the personal impact and economic hardship of the war on families, problems of financing the
war, wartime inflation, and laws against hoarding goods and materials and profiteering.
Use shorter text or excerpts of longer texts
Supporting Student Needs
Considerations for Reader and Task
To really understand a complex text, the reader will have to read it more than once, to make sense of what the author is saying
and to glean the details at both the explicit and implicit levels. First and foremost, close reading demands a willingness to
return to the text to read part or even all of it more than once, ultimately instilling habits of mind in approaching text. Planning
for multiple reads as well as multiple purposes for reads is essential in order to support all student needs.
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By: Judy Nguyen, Ingrid Maldonado, Salecia Mekanisi, and Jane Fung
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Potential Challenges this Text Poses:
Strategies/Lessons to access complex text: Pre teach
Meaning: (Conceptual Understanding Examples, pg. #)
CCSS Focus Standards:
-Background knowledge of the American Revolution and Boston *RL5.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from
involvement in events that lead to the revolution
details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama
-Vocabulary: unfamiliar terms/vocabulary connection
respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects
(subject specific)
upon a topic; summarize the text.
*RL5.6: Describe how a
-Inferences to support connections
narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are
-Drawing conclusions using explicit and implicit information
described.
*RI 5.1 Quote accurately from a text when
-Geographic location disconnect (weather specific, Mediterranean explaining
vs.
what the text says explicitly and when drawing
Seasonal)
inferences from the text.
Pg. 102: Economical hardship
Pg. 104: Loss of employment
*L.5.3, L.5.4, L.5.6
Pg. 110: Courage to confront General Gage (Britian)
Language: (Syntax, Vocabulary Examples, pg. #)
Unfamiliar vocabulary-subject specific, Tier 1 and Tier 2 words that will
need to be defined prior to the reading.
Pg. 102: spectacles, folks, flutes, King George, patriots
Pg. 104: lobster backs, Boston Common, port, gulls
Pg. 106: navigation, arithmetic, colony
Pre teach
Activity/Lesson
-American Colony’s desire for independence
-Revisit/review American Revolution Period
-Work backwards: give students inferences and have them
support by using evidence from text.
-Pre-teach vocabulary/concepts of independence, biases,
and prejudices that can create conflict
-Text is very complex, scaffolding of concepts and ideas
-Close Reading Strategies (i.e. Reading with post its,
illustration
-Walk-Through discussion, partner share
-Whole group first read (chunked with skill specific focus)
- Character Analysis
- Show American Revolution video
-Word maps
-World Map
First Read: Day 1: read pages 102-104, Day 2: 106-109, Day 3: 109-112. The goal of the first read is to build background
knowledge and teach vocabulary.
Close Reads
Create Coherent Sequence of Text-Dependent Questions
Create Coherent Sequences of Text-Dependent Questions – Start Small to Build Confidence
The opening questions should help orient students to the text, and be specific enough to answer so students gain confidence.
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.
Think of ways to maximize student engagement.
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Close Read I
Learning Focus: Build background knowledge and vocabulary
Focus CCSS: RL5.2, L.5.3, L.5.4, L.5.6
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
Text-Dependent Questions
Using the text, cite who closed the Boston
harbor and why?
When King George closed the Boston Harbor,
the text states, this created hard times for the
people of Boston. Cite specific evidence from
pages 102-104 of these hard times.
“The British closed our harbor by order of the
King of England, George III” Pg. 102
“King George wanted to punish those in
Boston who spoke against his laws that were
made across the sea” Pg. 102
“In December of 1774, times were hard for all
of us in Boston. Few good folk had coins to
spare when they walked past the window of
father’s shop on King’s Street…” Pg. 102
“By order of the King of England, George III.
King George wanted to punish those in Boston
who spoke against his law that were made
across the sea…” Pg. 102
“And there was no trade. There was little
work for the men on Long Wharf, once the
busiest dock in New England, filled the tall
masts ….” Pg. 102
“Or cutting down our fences and our trees for
their firewood. King George wanted General
Cage to make sure that we kept his new laws
and that we paid our taxes to English. Every
penny.” Pg. 104
While the other children went home for hot
bean porridge, what did Henry and his siblings
do?
“But not Colin or Ben, or I. We had brought
out sleds to school” pg. 106
What were the cause and effects of the
soldiers camping on the Boston Common? Cite
specific evidence.
1. “Some of General Gage’s soldiers had
placed their tents and their cooking fires right
in the middle of our sled run.
2. “They had broken the ice on the Common’s
ponds so no one could skate.”
3. “They had knocked down the snow forts
the town boys had worked yesterday to
build.”
Pg. 112
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What did General Gage say that shows his
understanding and empathy of Henry’s
problem/predicament?
“’I have sons and daughters, too,’ he added,
nodding at Kate. ‘And I know m own children
would like to sled this hill if they were here.
But they’re back in England in school.” p. 112
Close Read II.
Learning Focus: Character Analysis Focus CCSS:
Text-Dependent Questions
Being that this a Historical Fiction genre, what
examples does the author use illustrate key
time period.
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
“In December of 1774, times were had for all
of us in Boston” Pg. 102
“Months ago, on the first day of June, the
British closed our harbor by the order of the
King of England, George III” Pg. 102
“King George wanted to punish those in
Boston who spoke against him laws that were
made across the sea …” Pg. 102
“Now only the king’s ships could enter or
leave our harbor. And so there was no trade.
There was little work for the men on Long
Wharf, once the busiest dock in New England,
filled with the tall masts of ships that had
sailed to China and to Spain, to the West
Indies and back.” – Pg. 104
How do you think Henry felt about King
George and the British solders? Cite evidence
from the text to explain your reasoning.
Henry compares General Gage to his father.
What are General Gage’s actions that remind
Henry of his father?
Compare and contrasts how Henry feels about
General Gage at the beginning of the story to
the end of the story.
“Every day, there were more and more of the
king’s soldiers marching on Boston Common
…. Or the cutting down our fences and our
trees for the for their firewood. King George
wanted General Gage to make sure that we
kept his new laws and that we paid our taxes
to England.
“. . . and was speaking kindly to his soldiers.”
“General Gage looked like a man who would
listen, a good man, a man like my father.” p.
110
Beginning: “All over Boston, south and north,
people were not happy with King George III or
with our new royal governor, General Thomas
Gage” – Pg. 102
End: “General Gage had given us back a pond
and our sled runs on Boston Common because
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he had children of his own. Indeed, he was a
good man.” Pg.116
Checking for Understanding
How will you know that learning has occurred? Planning for a means to check student understanding is crucial. Refer back to
the Lesson Focus to plan intentionally to check for student understanding.
Describe how you will check for student understanding:
STUDENTS FIGURE OUT
THE MEANING
sufficient context clues
are provided in the text
TEACHER PROVIDES
DEFINITION
not enough contextual
clues provided in the text
Vocabulary
KEY WORDS ESSENTIAL TO
UNDERSTANDING
Words addressed with a question or task
WORDS WORTH KNOWING
General teaching suggestions are provided in
the Introduction
Revolutionary War
Boston Common
British
Taxes
East Coast
Arithmetic
Porridge
Ruts
Harsh
Drilling
Bayonets
Rebel
Siege
King George
General Thomas Gage
Governor
Lobster tail
Sled
Sons of Liberty
Stark
Patriots
Tyrant
Pg. 99 Teacher Guide
Glossary and within text for students
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