Textual Analysis Made Easy: Ready-to-Use Tools for Teachers, Grades 5-8 [Paperback]

In this new book, youll learn how to teach evidence-based writing using a variety of tools, activities, and sample literary texts. Showing elementary and middle school students how to think critically about what theyre reading can be a challenge, but author C. Brian Taylor makes it easy by presenting twelve critical thinking tools along with step-by-step instructions for implementing each one effectively in the classroom. Youll learn how to:

• Design units and lesson plans that gradually introduce your students to more complex levels of textual analysis;
• Encourage students to dig deeper by using the 12 Tools for Critical Thinking;
• Help students identify context and analyze quotes with the Evidence Finder graphic organizer;
• Use the Secret Recipe strategy to construct persuasive evidence-based responses that analyze a texts content or technique;
• Create Cue Cards to teach students how to recognize and define common literary devices.

The book also offers a series of extra examples using mentor texts, so you can clearly see how the strategies in this book can be applied to excerpts from popular, canonical, and semi-historical literature. Additionally, a number of the tools and templates in the book are available as free eResources from our website (http://www.routledge.com/9781138950658), so you can start using them immediately in your classroom.

eResources

About the Author

Foreword by Jim Blasingame

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. A Critical Thinking Map: ThinklCM