Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading
Selection: Mighty Jackie The Strikeout Queen__ by Marissa Moss___ Grade 4 :Unit 2__
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)
Moderately Complex:
More than one level of meaning, two themes-one being political, the other individual
Text Structure- some shifts in time
Graphics- illustrations generally help comprehension
Language Features: very complex with abstract, irony, and figurative language
Vocabulary- some academic words, with higher level word choice
Sentence Structure-very complex, clauses, phrases, use of dashes and quotation marks
Knowledge /demands-Moderately complex to very complex; background of baseball and gender inequality
CCSS Focus Standards:
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.
Potential Challenges this Text Poses:
Strategies/Lessons to access complex text: Pre teach
Meaning: (Conceptual Understanding Examples, pg. #)
Multiple levels of meaning,
ex. 1. Gender inequality, pg. 166,” “everyone knew that girls
didn’t play baseball.
2. Perseverance: Pg. 169: “She practiced pitching till it was too
cold and dark to stay outside.”
CCSS Focus Standards:
Language: (Syntax, Vocabulary Examples, pg. #)
Extensive use of similes: “. . .might as well have ‘a trained seal
behind the plate’ as have a woman standing there.” (p. 166),
“You throw like a girl” (simile/irony, p. 169), “Jackie held that
ball like it was part of her arm . . .” (p. 173
Preteach Baseball terms and history
Picture Walk with discussion before reading
Teacher reads aloud first read to emphasize prosody (as an
aide for comprehension).
Thinking Maps, Think-Pair-Share, Group Discussions, Teacher
Modeling, Explicit directions and expectations
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.3: Describe in depth a character,
setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific
details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or
actions).
Knowledge Demands: (Briefly describe the knowledge
demands the text requires of students.) Life Experiences: Very
to Moderately to Complex: . . .varying levels of complexity,
experiences portrayed are uncommon to most readers.

Student population may not have the experience of
pitching a baseball.

Student population ould be exposed but not all of them
with gender exclusion in sports activities, attitudes
towards females, simply based on their gender.
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Joanne Duehren and Vanessa Anderson
Pre teach
Activity/Lesson
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:
Culminating Task: Students will write to the following promptsDescribe Jackie’s character and the impact she made on history. Cite evidence from the text.
Why is this event important to write about?
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.
Close Read I
Learning Focus: Focus CCSS: RL 4.3
Text-Dependent Questions
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
Read page 169. What is Jackie’s experience
with baseball as a child? Who were the two
people who noticed her talent and what did
they do to support her?
Pg. 169. Jackie played ball with her father. He
told her she could do anything. She practiced
for hours. “Dazzy Vance, the star pitcher for
the Brooklyn Dodgers, had taught her how to
pitch. A real pitcher talking to a little girl was
all Jackie needed to start dreaming of playing
in the World Series.”
“Jackie worked at baseball, she worked hard”,
“She practiced pitching till it was too cold and
dark,… until her shoulder ached, until her
eyes were blurry”
Read page 166. What did the New York papers
write about the exhibition game?
Explain the meaning of what the reporters
said.
Read page 169. What did people think about
girls playing baseball?
Pg.166. The media reported girls were not
major league baseball players. “The New York
Daily News sneered that she would swing a
mean lipstick instead of a bat.”
The reporters were saying that Jackie would
not be able to play well against the men
because she was a girl.
Pg. 169. Jackie knew girls weren’t supposed to
play baseball. All the boys told her that. It was
common for people to say “You throw like a
girl” as an insult.
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Joanne Duehren and Vanessa Anderson
Pg. 169, pg. 173 ,pg 174
Describe Jackie’s character when she’s
pitching. Pg. 179. How did Jackie feel when
she struck them out?
Pg. 170. Jackie was confident, knowledgeable
and skilled- “It’s my game.” “Jackie was ready
for him.”
Pg 173 “Jackie held the ball like it was…she
knew exactly where it would go”
“She knew the batter would expect the same
pitch…so this time she threw…”
Pg. 179. Jackie was proud and happy, “She’d
done what she’d always know she could do.
She’d shown the world how a girl could
throw-as hard and as fast and as far as she
wanted.”
Why did the illustrator end the story with a
little girl on the pitcher’s mound?
The illustration shows that Jackie dreamed of
this from the time she was very little, to show
that she worked hard all her life and never
gave up, and realized her dream.
Close Read II.
Learning Focus: Describe the event
Text-Dependent Questions
Focus CCSS: RL4.3
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
What was unusual about this exhibition game? Pg. 166, The pitcher was a girl. “Jackie was a
girl and everyone knew that girls didn’t play
major league baseball.”
Page 173. What are some words and phrases
“But the next pitch was another ball. Now the
the author uses to describe the spectators in
crowd was hooting and jeering. The Babe was
the beginning of the game? How do these
snickering with them.” This means they were
words mean the crowd is feeling about Jackie? laughing at her, or saying she wasn’t any
good.
Page 175 and 165. Who was the first batter
Babe Ruth was a legendary player, “the Home
and why was this significant?
Run King”.. It was significant because if Jackie
could face the best batter in the Big Leagues
then she would show how good she was.
Page 175-74. How does the author describe
He gaped, after she threw a strike, snickered
Babe Ruth’s reaction to batting against Jackie? when she threw a ball. He was mad after the
second strike. He glared at umpire and threw
the bat down in disgust.
Pg 179. How did the crowd react at the end of “The crowd, so ready to boo her before, rose
this event? Why did it change from the
with a roar, clapping and cheering like crazy.”
beginning?
In the beginning they thought there was no
chance Jackie would strike out Babe Ruth and
Lou Gehrig, but at the end the crowd realized
they had just seen something very special.
Jackie had proven she was a great pitcher.
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Joanne Duehren and Vanessa Anderson
Why was this event considered historical?
This was an historical event because it proved
that a woman could play a major league sport
just a well as the boys. Jackie worked very
hard to make her dream come true and it did.
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:
Culminating Task: Students will write to the following promptsDescribe Jackie’s character and the impact she made on history. Cite evidence from the text.
Why is this event important to write about?
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
Fluke, page 174
Callused, page 149
Blurred over, page 169
Hooting and jeering, page 173
WORDS WORTH KNOWING
General teaching suggestions are provided in
the Introduction
Gaped, pg. 179
Flinched, pg. 173
Snickering, pg. 173
Insult, pg. 169
Bleachers, pg. 170
“a big mountain of a man”, page 173
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Delicate, page 173
“Sultan of Swat”, page 174
“Iron Horse”, page 174
Joanne Duehren and Vanessa Anderson