They even provide a structure to help teachers do this with their students. The authors suggest that teachers work with students to create their own text dependent questions. What do you do to help your students dig deeper into a text without leading them to the meaning you derived from the text?Īnother term that has risen to the top of discussion since the implementation of Common Core is 'text dependent questions.' In Notice & Note, the authors write, 'We worry that a focus on text-dependent questions may create a nation of teacher-dependent kids.Text dependent questions usually suggest that a teacher has crafted the questions and the order of them to lead students to a predetermined meaning of a particular passage' (p. Beers and Probst give you six signposts that you can teach your students to help them dig deeper into the text and create meaning by transacting with the text at a deeper level.

Students should be thinking deeper about the questions they are having or why he or she finds the part surprising.

If they are closely reading, there should be a transaction between the reader and the text. My question has always been: How are students supposed to know what they should be writing in the margins that is actually helpful in deeply understanding a text? It seems too simple to just have them write a question mark next to a part where they have a question or an exclamation point next to something that was surprising. Many of those say that students should be annotating as they read. What does that mean exactly? I have seen the posters everywhere on Pinterest and in the blogisphere that breaks close reading down to what you do each time you read the text (reading the text two to four times). Common Core Standards require students to closely read a variety of texts.

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