Creating Text-Dependent Questions for Close Analytic Reading
Selection: Maya Lin: Architect of Memory by Commissioned Article Grade: 5 Unit 1
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: Very Complex
Subject Matter Knowledge- Moderate levels of discipline-specific content knowledge
Intertexuality-Some references or allusions to other texts or outside ideas, theories, etc.
Background knowledge of US history, historical perspectives, geography
Text Structure: Moderately Complex
Organization of Main Ideas- Moderately Complex
Text Features- Moderately Complex
Captions: pgs. 65, 66, 67
Headings: pgs. 65, 66
Bold Print: pgs. 64-67
Sidebar: pgs. 64, 67
Use of Graphics- Very Complex (pictures are essential to understanding the text)
Pgs. 64-67
CCSS Focus Standards:
RI.5.1.1 Use clues to draw inferences in the text
RI.5.2 Main Idea and details
RI.5.3.1 Identify a specific relationship between two or more people, events, ideas or concepts in a history or
science text.
L5.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 5
reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
Use shorter text or excerpts of longer texts
BIG QUESTION: How can monuments have messages which honor the past and recall lessons learned?
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. #)
Maturity of theme: Ideas and emotions can be expressed
through different media (i.e. words, architecture)
CCSS Focus Standards: RI 5.2, RI 5.3
Explicit instruction for identifying main ideas and text
features of informational text.
Approaching informational Text-Access Strategies, use the
“Access Prior Knowledge” lesson
Explicit instruction for identifying a specific relationship
between events in an informational text.
Language: (Syntax, Vocabulary Examples, pg. #)
Discipline specific vocabulary
-Refer to the vocabulary section of this lesson plan (last page)
Pre teach
Activity/Lesson
1
Access to informative text
Vocabulary
Historical backgrounds of Vietnam War & the civil right
movement
-identify the overall main idea of selection
-identify the main ideas within the proceeding
paragraphs
First Read:
Read through the text in one day. The main ideas have been identified in the pre-teach lesson. For the first read,
have students summarize at the end of selected paragraphs, and/or pages.
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: Vocabulary, quote accurately from the text.
Text-Dependent Questions
Focus CCSS: RI5.1, RI5.2, L5.4
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
Reread the first two paragraphs on pg. 64,
What can you see about Maya Lin’s character
from these two paragraphs?
She stood back behind tinted window and
stayed quiet because she liked to watch how
people reacted to her art. She wasn’t just
trying to be seen.
Why did Maya design the Civil Rights
Maya Lin designed the Civil Rights Memorial
Memorial? (pg. 64)
to honor people who died fighting for equality
during the civil rights movement.
Maya Lin’s memorial exhibit’s evoked emotions Some visitors reached out and touch the
or feelings in some visitors of the memorial?
names of loved ones names carved into a
Use examples from the text to support your
black granite disk with their faces wet with
answer. (pgs. 64 and 65)
tears.
A woman named Sarah Salter said about her
husband who was killed in Montgomery in
1957, “I’m so thankful; at last he’s being
recognized.”
Some angry veterans called the V-shaped
granite wall a “black gash of shame.”
visitors who pay respect often leave
mementos.
Lin’s Vietnam Memorial does not present any
This simple wall helped the Unites States
artifacts, but how did this simple wall help the
begin the long process of healing after years
United States? (pg.65)
of bad feelings over the war by honoring
those who served.
When Lin looks at herself, how does see
herself? (pg. 65)
What inspired Lin in the design of her Civil
Rights Memorial? (pg. 66)
She said that she is an architect, an artist, and
she makes things. She loves the fact that she
can make things, walk away, and look at it just
like everyone else. She feels that she is a
problem solver.
A line in Marin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a
Dream” speech inspired Lin. “We will not be
satisfied until justice rolls down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
2
Reread the first sentence of paragraph 2 on
page 65, “Lin’s Vietnam Memorial does not
present any artifacts of the Vietnam War.”
What does artifact mean? Use evidence from
the text to explain your answer. RI5.1
DOK 3
What is the overall main idea of this article?
(pg. 64-67)
Support your answer with details from the text.
DOK1
Artifacts are things made by people in the
past. In the text it says, “The Vietnam
Memorial...is just a wall,” meaning there were
no other items displayed, related to the war.
The overall main idea is that monuments have
messages, which honor the past and recall
lessons learned. In the first paragraph of the
text on page 64, Lin is quoted saying, “I like
standing back quietly. You create your
message, and then it is out there on its own.”
Close Read II.
Learning Focus: Determining two or more main ideas, support with details, explain relationships
between two or more events.
Focus CCSS: RI5.2, RI5.3
Text-Dependent Questions
Evidence-Based Answers/Pg. #
Read the two first paragraphs on page 64.
Maya Lin stated, “I like standing back quietly.
You create your message, and then it is out
there on its own.” What was her message?
What did she do to create her message?
Read the section under the heading:
Remembering Vietnam Veterans on page 65.
How did May Lin create a message for Vietnam
veterans?
Lin designed the exhibits for the Civil Rights
Memorial. Her “memorial honors those who
died fighting for equality during the civil rights
movement.” (page 64)
Reread the second paragraph under the
heading: Remembering Vietnam Veterans on
page 65. The author states that there were bad
feelings after the Vietnam war. How did the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial help the United
States begin the process of healing the bad
feelings?
Maya Lin designed memorials about two
historical events: The Civil Rights Movement
and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She
engraved the names of people who died during
these historical events. What message did she
create by using the names?
In the photograph on page 67, a hand is
touching a name on the memorial. What can
you infer from this picture?
DOK2
Maya created the winning design for the Vshaped Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In her
design, 58,000 names were carved into the
stone of the memorial. The names are those
of the Americans who died in the Vietnam
war.
The article states, “The memorial made it
possible for the country to come together and
honor those who had served.”
The names help people remember the events
and lessons of the past. Maya Lin said, “If you
don’t remember history accurately, how can
you learn?” (page 67)
The caption tells us that the hand is touching
her husband’s name. I can infer from this
tender gesture that she misses her husband
and would like to be close to him again, even
if only by touching his engraved name.
3
Describe how the Civil Rights Memorial and the
words from Martin Luther King’s speech
resemble each other. (pg. 66-67)
DOK3
Compare and contrast the Lin’s two memorials.
DOK2
Why do you think that Maya Lin chose granite
for both memorials? What would have been
your choice? Why?
DOK3
If you had to create a memorial for Iraqi War
veterans, what material would you use and
how would you design it? Design a picture.
The big round black disk with the names of
those who died turns and the water runs over
the names and down the side of the disk. A
river’s water flows over rocks and sometime
over cliffs like rapids or a waterfall.
Both made of black granite. Both symbolize
standing up for the rights of others. Contrast
one standing up for the rights of their
countrymen with the other fight for the rights
of another nation.
Granite is a symbol of strength and
endurance, which is what Lin wants us to
remember when we recall the brave people
associated with these two great events in
recent American History. I might have
selected brushed aluminum, as it would have
lent itself to more dramatic, modern
sculpture.
I would choose brushed aluminum for the
memorial. I imagine sweeping curves pointing
skyward. It should be set in a desert
landscape.
DOK4
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:
“How did one architect create two of the most powerful memorials in the United States?” What details and evidence does the
author use to support these points?
Vocabulary
TEACHER PROVIDES
DEFINITION
not enough contextual
clues provided in the text
KEY WORDS ESSENTIAL TO
UNDERSTANDING
Words addressed with a question or task
WORDS WORTH KNOWING
General teaching suggestions are provided in
the Introduction
memorial pg. 64
architect pg. 64
granite pg. 65
Vietnam pg. 64
civil right movement pg. 64
exhibits pg. 64
Invoke (?)
Artifacts pg. 65
dedicated pg. 65
freedom fighters pg. 67
diameter pg. 67
4
STUDENTS FIGURE OUT
THE MEANING
sufficient context clues
are provided in the text
equality pg. 64
limelight pg. 64
granite pg. 65
process pg. 65
justice pg. 66
righteousness pg. 66
patience pg. 66
awareness pg. 66
sensitivity pg. 66
inscribed pg.67
(Cognates)
habit pg. 64
exhibit pg. 64
dedicated pg. 65
inscribed pg. 67
5