MTEL Foundations of Reading

Category - Foundations of Reading

A fifth-grade teacher plans to use the passage below in a lesson focused on analyzing literary texts.

Zander told me it didn't matter what the exact rules were, or what was "fair" according to Coach. What mattered most was the team winning against Sagamore and advancing to the next level. "So, okay? You in?" he asked me.

I just looked at him without saying a word. I like Zander. He's funny, smart, popular—everything I'm not. So I wanted to say, Sure, let's do it. But I kept seeing Coach's face in my mind, like he was looking me right in the eye. 
"I don't know," I said slowly. Zander's eyes narrowed and his mouth set firmly shut. Oh, great, I thought. Now I'll have NO friends at school.

The teacher is planning text-based questions to use in a post-reading discussion about the passage. Which of the following organizing questions would most effectively prompt students' higher-order analysis of this passage? 
  1. Who says "What matters most is the team winning" and how can you tell?
  2. How does the narrator describe the character named Zander and the character referred to as Coach?
  3. How does the author use dialogue to advance the plot?
  4. How are the narrator's relationships with Zander and Coach similar and yet different?
Explanation
Correct Response: D. This question prompts students to analyze the central conflict faced by the narrator (main character) in the passage: whether to live up to the values that govern their relationship with Coach or, instead, compromise these values to help a popular—but unprincipled—peer, Zander. To answer the question in Option D, students must infer the nature of the two relationships and then compare and contrast these relationships, a higher-order analysis that clarifies what is at stake for the narrator in this scene. Options A and B are incorrect because these questions target students' literal comprehension of the passage. Students can answer the questions by recalling explicitly stated details from the text or by scanning the text without using higher-order literary analysis skills. Option C is incorrect because the question is not relevant to the passage shown. A plot is the sequence of major events in a narrative. In the excerpt, dialogue is minimal, and does not advance the plot.
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