English Language Arts and Reading.8.6.B

The student is expected to

write responses that demonstrate understanding of texts, including comparing sources within and across genres;

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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Response skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student responds to an increasingly challenging variety of sources that are read, heard, or viewed.

Instruct students to write answers to comprehension questions about a text. Students should be able to support their responses with evidence from the text. A teacher may wish to provide sentence stems for written responses. Evaluate responses for accuracy, appropriate evidence, and use of target academic language. Students can include evidence from multiple texts within a genre such as details from two different expository texts on a topic. Students can also include evidence across genres such as details from a narrative and an expository text that address the same theme or topic.

Possible prompts:

  • What is the message of this text? What text evidence supports the message?
  • What do you think is the author’s purpose for writing this text? What does the text say that helps you determine this purpose?
  • What is the controlling idea? What details support the controlling idea?
     

Further Explanation

This SE requires students to communicate in writing their understanding of the purpose, key ideas, and overall messages of texts. When students truly comprehend a text, they should be able to make reasonable connections to other sources that address the same ideas in similar or different ways. It is important for students to develop response skills with all genres. This activity can be completed with multiple genres. 

a verbal or written reaction to something that is read, viewed, written, or heard Responses activities can help students better comprehend and build meaning from a text.
Students should read and respond to a variety of diverse texts. As students engage with texts, they are expected to idenitfy similarities and differences between and among texts of the same genre (e.g., between two poems) as well as across different genres (e.g., informational vs. argumentative text).
Students should be able to communicate in writing their understanding of a text's purpose, key ideas, overall messages, and impact on the reader. When students truly comprehend a text, they should be able to make reasonable connections to other sources that address the same ideas in similar or different ways. These comparisons help students recognize the complexity of ideas and inform their own responses.