This strategy guide focuses on persuasive writing and offers specific methods on how you can help your students use it to improve their critical writing and thinking skills.

Teachers need to create text-dependent questions to elicit close reading. When answering these questions, students learn to reread and think deeply about the text.

Complex texts promote deep thinking and critical analysis by students. Through close reading of a complex text, students' independent reading abilities also increase.

Close readings allow primary students to engage with complex texts. Through repeated reading, students build a deep understanding of the text and critical thinking skills.

In this strategy guide, you'll learn about Partner Talk—a way to provide students with another learning opportunity to make learning their own through collaboration and discussion.

A Concept Sort is a vocabulary and comprehension strategy used with students to introduce new topics and/or familiarize students with new vocabulary.

This strategy guide introduces the concept of using Exit Slips in the classroom to help students reflect on what they have learned and express what or how they are thinking about the new information. Exit Slips easily incorporate writing into the content area classroom and require students to think critically.