Page 15 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Close Reading of argumentative nonfiction Texts (continued)
ACTIvITy 1
Guided Practice
You will read the text in this activity at least three times, focusing on a different purpose for each reading.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the following passage silently. Your focus for this first reading is on understanding the meaning of the passage. As you read, practice diffusing the words you may not know by replacing unfamiliar words with synonyms or definitions for the underlined words. Use the definitions and synonyms to the right of the paragraphs to help your understanding.
From Time to Become a
E. coli: Escherichia coli is an intestinal bacteria that can cause food poisoning in humans.
by Neal Peirce
1 The first OK to buy spinach after the big E. coli scare was for crops shipped out of Colorado or Canada. Then the Food and Drug Administration cleared California spinach — except the suspect packages sent out by Natural Selection Foods.
2 Great. But why is three-quarters of all U.S. spinach grown in California, then shipped to markets as far distant as 3,500 highway miles? And especially at this time of year, when spinach can be grown successfully almost anywhere?
3 Agribusiness — that’s why. Supermarket chains, grocery wholesalers and fast-food producers all calculate that it is easier to maximize sales and profits by buying from big factory farms with reliable yields. Why fool with thousands of small farms or co- ops when you can get a standardized crop, packaged to precise specifications, priced at negotiated levels, trucked and delivered by known shippers? And when planes, ships and instant communications make it easy to import seasonal products from virtually anywhere on the globe?
4 Small wonder, then, that most of America’s farmers must struggle to stay in business and on the land — hundreds of thousands have failed in the past decade. Locally grown food makes up less than 1 percent of the $900-billion food industry.
5 And for that, we all pay — year in, year out, and far beyond the inconvenience of a single instance of contamination wiping a popular vegetable off grocery shelves in 50 states.
“Locavore”
14 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
argument
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