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Text-dependent questions DO:
• Draw the reader back to the text to discover what it says.
• Require concrete and explicit answers rooted in the text.
• Involve analysis, synthesis and/or evaluation.
• Focus on difficult portions of the text in order to promote the highest levels of reading proficiency with grade-level text.
• Engage with word, sentence and paragraph considerations as well as larger ideas, themes or events.
• Promote analytical, written and spoken communication about the text.
• Require students to describe their use of reading strategies.
• Expect personal opinions from students.
• Draw upon irrelevant background information or prior knowledge.
• Prompt imaginative speculation.
• Backwards-designed to help students focus on the central idea or theme.
• Crucial for creating an overarching set of successful questions.
• Critical for creating an appropriate culminating assessment.
• Themes and central ideas
• Knowledge of high-level vocabulary
• Syntax and structure
• Strategies are no longer taught in isolation.
• Text-dependent questions require students to apply reading strategies but not directly refer to them when writing about or discussing the text.
• The readers' comprehension of the text drives the use of strategies.