If ever there was a time when kids needed to learn to how to make sense of what’s going  on in politics, it has to be now!  Every year, it’s becoming more essential that citizens learn to dig out and really understand the facts behind what they see on social media.

And with another election season upon us, it’s  the perfect time to make use of election-related issues in classroom readings.  Informational texts are so important in the middle school curriculum, and what could be more relevant than information about voting rights.  It’s a timely topic with issues like voter suppression and gerrymandering surfacing with each new election.

To help put voting rights in perspective, I thought it might be helpful to look at a previous struggle for voting rights in our history.  So I prepared this one-page reading about the women’s suffrage movement.  Just like with the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment today, the fight for women’s suffrage took a long time to accomplish – over seventy years, in fact!  The story makes an interesting read, and this close reading page will give your kids a little introduction.

Included with the story are questions and activities for each of the three steps of the close reading process, and best of all this resource is FREE!  You can download it here: Close Reading – Winning the Vote.

Here’s a list of the activities:

For the First Reading

• Text Dependent Questions (TDQs)
• Main idea and Supporting Details – Graphic Organizer

For the Second Reading

• Text Dependent Questions (TDQs)
• Vocabulary Graphic Organizer
• Text Structure Graphic Organizer

For the Third Reading

• Text Dependent Questions (TDQs)
• Writing Prompt

The article and the TDQs are arranged in a landscape, two-column format so that they can be folded to fit easily into student’s notebooks.

I’ve made Winning the Vote free for two reasons – to introduce teachers to my close reading resources, and to help kids prepare to make good choices some day when it becomes their turn to vote!

Here you can see a few of the pages.  Click on any one to get the free download.

I hope you find this a useful addition to your classroom!

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