Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Going Deep with Award Winning Books:
Close reading and text-dependent questions

Putting Close Reading Into Action

Try these suggestions for some text-dependent questions to use in close reading of award-winning texts.  Though the Caldecott Award is given for distinguished illustrations, the writing in these texts is worthy of examination.  It is very likely that TeachersFirst users will find these texts in your school or public libraries.  Use this list as a starting point and a guide for developing your own close reading lessons and text-dependent questions. If you have a document camera available, you might want to project the text on a screen or interactive whiteboard during some of the question and discussion phases so student can look (and even “touch”) the text evidence themselves.