Creating Text Dependent Questions for ELLs: Examples for 6th-8th Grade
This guidance document provides useful tips for constructing text-dependent questions (TDQs) for English language learners (ELLs). In this post from Colorin Colorado!, the authors created TDQs for a middle school informational text that is appropriate for ELLs. These TDQs are based on the authors’ previous work on adapting Achieve the Core’s TDQ guides and developing a framework to scaffold TDQs for ELLs. The authors provide a step-by-step process for writing TDQs for the particular text they select and include instructional tasks and materials based on the process outlined.
The authors of this blog post share their expertise in ELL learning and instruction by creating a step-by-step process for providing appropriate levels of support for ELLs in text comprehension. The TDQs from this post can be used by teachers in a close reading lesson, and the authors include a nicely-formatted PDF version of the lesson. More importantly, the authors give teachers of ELL students ideas on what to consider when creating TDQs and close reading lessons for ELLs.