Birthstones Reading Comprehension Passages and Questions Leveled Close Reading

These close reading passages and activities are the perfect tools to help students practice close reading skills during the month of January. This week-long lesson on The Story of Birthstones: A Special Gift That is a Real Gem follows a close reading model and includes a teacher guide and notes to make teaching the lesson easy! Students will be required to use close reading skills to practice making logical inferences, citing textual evidence, and drawing conclusions from the text.

PRINT & GO! Easily differentiate instruction with the leveled reading passages for grades 3-5. Includes everything you need to teach a week-long close reading lesson.

⭐ A digital Google Classroom option is included! (Google Slides™)

⭐⭐ Bundle and Save! This resource is also included in the following bundle.

Close Reading Comprehension Passages | New Year Activities | January Bundle

Close Reading Lesson:

The Story of Birthstones: A Special Gift That is a Real Gem!

This high-interest and engaging topic will captivate the interest of students!

Step-by-Step instructions (for teacher and students) are included that follows a close reading model.

Step 1: First Reading: Determine what the text says.

Step 2: Second Reading: Determine how the text says it.

Step 3: Third Reading: Determine what the text means.

Step 4: Written Comprehension: Write and Respond

Includes:

• Implementation Guide (Steps to Close Reading)
• Teacher Guide and Notes
• Classroom Posters
• Mark It Up! Annotation Cards
• 2 Differentiated Reading Passages
• Text-Dependent Questions
• Vocabulary Practice
• Written Response
• Close Reading Graphic Organizers 

Easily Differentiate Instruction!

These close reading comprehension passages are written at 2 different levels to allow for differentiation during instruction. The content of the 2 passages are the same, but the reading levels are different. Questions about the content are the same. This makes it easy for you to provide students with the same questions and activity sheets while also allowing students to practice close reading skills on their reading level.

All answer keys are included!

⭐ Note: Each reading passage is leveled with special symbols at the bottom left corner to denote difficulty levels.

This resource is aligned to the anchor standard that refers to reading text closely:

ELA Reading Standard 1: “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it, cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.”