The Christmas Around the World Close Reading passages include sentence stems and short answer responses that focus on critical thinking and using text evidence to make inferences.

Critical Thinking, Close Reading

Each section of text has three sets of questions. The first set of questions requires students respond to the text in short answer responses (SAR). The second set of questions require students to analyze the text by taking notes and summarizing the text. The third set of questions use a graphic organizer to analyze text structure.

Sentence Stems for Scaffolding

The questions are in two formats: 1) open-ended and 2) structured response. The structured response format is perfect for younger readers (grades 3-4), struggling middle school readers, and English Learners.

Critical Thinking Question Stems

There are four types of questions: clarifying, making inferences, making connections, and critical thinking.

Clarifying. The clarifying questions ask students to focus in on difficult words and gather text evidence as context clues.

Making Inferences. The inferencing questions ask students to use text evidence and state an idea beyond the text.

Making Connections. These questions ask students to make text-to-self and text-to-text connections.

Critical Thinking. These questions are at the analysis and evaluation levels of thinking. Students will make decisions about a holiday tradition and judge whether they think it is an important tradition, based on text evidence.