Text-Dependent Questions, Grades K-5

Pathways to Close and Critical Reading

By: Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Heather Anderson, Marisol Thayre

Narrated by: Brandon Hearnsberger

Fisher & Frey’s answer to close and critical reading

Learn the best ways to use text-dependent questions as scaffolds during close reading and the big understandings they yield. But that’s just for starters. Fisher and Frey also include illustrative video, texts and questions, cross-curricular examples, and an online facilitator’s guide—making the two volumes of TDQ a potent professional development tool across all of K-12. The genius of TDQ is the way Fisher and Frey break down the process into four cognitive pathways:

• What does the text say?
• How does the text work?
• What does the text mean?
• What does the text inspire you to do?

©2014 Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Heather Anderson, Marisol Thayre (P)2022 Corwin

Critic reviews

“Fisher and Frey deliver another indispensable resource for teachers of adolescents across the curriculum as they strive to meet today’s more rigorous standards. Mentoring students to grow from dependence on questions provided by others to developing the capacity to ‘interrogate a text’ themselves is fundamental to proficient reading of complex disciplinary texts. Text-Dependent Questions provides teachers with a carefully reasoned pathway for questioning a text as a requisite for close reading.” —Dough Buehl, Author of Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning

“Everything about this book is genuine. From the authors’ candid appraisal of the myths surrounding close reading to their forthright recommendations for teaching, it is refreshing. Fisher and Frey have been there, lived the pedagogy, and generated much of the scholarship that makes Text-Dependent Questions both compelling and unpretentious. Readers who have heard this dynamic pair speak at conferences and other professional gatherings are in for a treat; Fisher and Frey are indisputably on the frontline when it comes to engaging others in close reading.” —Donna Alvermann

“Fisher and Frey set the record straight about text-dependent questions. They demonstrate that text-dependent questions can address not only literal understanding but also understandings about what the text doesn’t say, how the text works, what the text means to and for the reader, how the text might be read in a specific discipline, and more. With specific prompts and concrete examples, Fisher and Frey show us how to use questioning as a central tool to address the Common Core State Standards.” —Nell K. Duke