Page 13 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade8_Flipbook

Close Reading of informational/literary nonfiction Texts (continued)
key ideas and deTails
What is the “primary task” defined by Roosevelt, and what can you infer about the occasion for this speech based on his proposed solutions?
Second Reading: vocabulary in Context
After reading the passage to yourself, listen and follow along as the passage is read again aloud. Again, circle words that you don’t know or that you think are important to understanding the passage. Also highlight or underline the topic sentences of each of the first two paragraphs.
Check your Understanding
1. Pair with another student to share your circled words and underlined
sentences. Discuss the meanings. Using these words and the underlined and bolded vocabulary from the passage, discuss how the vocabulary affects your understanding of the entire passage. Choose two or three of the words you have examined that you think are significant to understanding the passage you read. Use the words in a sentence or two that explain why these words contribute to your understanding.
2. Examine the topic sentences you have underlined. How do they help you understand what solutions to the national crisis Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposes in this speech? Summarize and explain the key concepts in his national recovery plan outlined in the first two paragraphs.
Third Reading: Text-Dependent Questioning
Reread the passage a third time and respond to the Key Ideas and Details questions by annotating the text with your responses to each question and by highlighting or underlining the textual evidence that supports your answers.
First Inaugural Address
By Franklin Delano Roosevelt
1 This Nation asks for action, and action now.
2 Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war,
but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources. Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through
12 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
© 2014 College Board. All rights reserved.