Textual Analysis Made Easy

In this new book, you'll 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 they're 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. You'll 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 text's 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.

C. Brian Taylor serves as a teacher, K-12 ELA coach, and district consultant in the Safford Unified School District and throughout Arizona.

eResources About the Author Foreword by Jim Blasingame Preface Acknowledgements Introduction - A Critical Thinking Map: Thinking about Text - The 12 Tools - The Evidence Finder - The Secret Recipe - Guided Practice - Extra Examples Using Mentor Texts - Bonus Tool: Cue Cards to Teach Literacy Terms References Index