I was recently talking to a friend of mine and she was mentioned that some of the district testing included paired reading passages.  She said it was hard for her kiddos, which was very interesting to BOTH of us.

Paired reading is nothing new. Mary Pope Osborne mastered this awhile ago with her Magic Tree House books and nonfiction companions.  They (and the author herself!) are brilliant and kids eat them up.

We found it curious that her kids took a ride down struggle street until we identified two factors:
1.)  the passages were unlike any the students had seen before because they were SO similar and
2.) most of the students’ experience was with paired BOOKS. Passages were not as familiar to the kiddos.

I found this quote from this website, and loved it!

“Close reading, text annotation, text-dependent questions, and paired passages are all tools that should be woven into ongoing instruction in order to develop students’ independent strategic reading skills.  While effective implementation of these strategies will result in better outcomes for all students on the Virginia English Reading Standards of Learning assessments, they are not test-taking strategies.  Rather, they are critical thinking strategies that provide students with opportunities to practice reading deeply and making meaning out of authentic fiction and nonfiction text (Boyles, 2013).  This shift in strategy practice will give students the skills they need to be successful throughout their school careers and into their postsecondary lives.”

Um, yes.  That is a nice way to paint the big picture and usefulness of paired passages.

So, I decided to create a little something to support those kiddos!

I am working on a series of paired reading passages!  I will be releasing them as SETS. Each set will have two passages…or something.  Some will be a nonfiction and fiction passage, others will be a passage and a poem or another type of reading. I am going to try to keep it as fresh as possible.
In this pack, I included a nonfiction passage and a poem that I wrote about sharks. I wanted to make sure that the passages could reach ALL kids in the classroom.  I wrote leveled passages that have the same information, but at different levels.  The levels range from end 1st- end 2nd.  If a poem is included, there is only 1 level. 
I wanted to include some practice with questioning. Each passage includes these flip flap books.   In one flip flap book students answer the given question. In another flip flap book, students create and answer their own questions about the text. 
Also included is an additional flip flip book that targets a different reading skill for each passage.
And finally, I wanted to include a constructed response in each set. This gives students practice answering a question in sentence or paragraph form and using the text to cite evidence.
So far I have managed to complete Set 1!  
I wrote set one for the beginning of the school year.  It focuses on friendship and bulling.  One passage is a fiction passage about bullying at recess.  The other passage is a nonfiction passage about how to play Freeze Tag.  I am trying to keep the packs super cheap for you guys- only $3 a pack.  Click here to check it out!
Set 2 is *almost done*.  It will include a fiction story about playing make believe as pirates and a nonfiction article about maps! It will happen SOON, I promise!
And lastly, if you read this WHOOOLLLLLEEEEE long post, I have a surprise for you!  I know shark week was last week (Late is my middle name!), but I have a SHARK WEEK paired passage set! 
This 17 page freebie has a shark poem and nonfiction passage!  In fact, it is what is in all the pictures above!
Click on the picture to get your freebie!
Enjoy!

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