Analyzing Primary Source Documents: Close Reading

This is a short and to the point post! I know I've mentioned a few times how I love reading the novel Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I'm so excited that we get to use the novel as our main text and every student in my class received a copy of the book. This makes close reading so much easier! I love how the author included a primary resource at the beginning of each chapter. I've been able to incorporate those resources throughout language arts and social studies.

    

For this lesson, I had my students close read a particular primary source in the beginning of the novel. I had them pair share and discuss their thoughts and answers to the charted questions. Then they wrote their answers in their ELA notebooks. Since the beginning of the school year, I have gone over the importance of finding evidence within the text/passage to support their answers/thoughts. It was wonderful to see them doing this in their responses.

 

***I've been using a curriculum guide created by the amazing teachers at Curriculum Specialists blog.