CCSS activity 2- source 2

Source: Valarie Strauss's "Common Core's odd approach to teaching Gettysburg Address"
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/11/19/common-cores-odd-approach-to-teaching-gettysburg-address/

Again, I choose this article because the title grabbed my attention.
I kind of thought this article might be similar to one of those CCSS youtube videos with the sketches.

As I began reading I instantly felt overwhelmed with the wording of the standards.
I am sure this is something that is intimidating for many people even professionals. It took me several times reading the sentences over and over to comprehend the idea behind the standard.

Once I comprehended what the standard was calling for my next thought was for an activity to demonstrate understanding of "“close reading” of the address “with text-dependent questions”.
The idea is that students will be able to use textual evidence to draw a conclusion about what the text is describing without using the word. To meet this standard I came up with this activity:

Goal: Students will be able to recognize this description as The Gettysburg Address 

ask: "What is being described in this paragraph?"

"A long time ago people whose skin was black were "owned" by people whose skin was white.

the people with white skin did not respect the people with black skin and treated them very badly. Alot of black people were hurt and sad for a very long time.

Then one day a very important man said that the people with white skin can not treat the people with black skin like this anymore, because it was wrong. 

Well the white people in the north of America followed this law even though some did not like it.

White people in the south of America did not like this new law and wanted to get rid of it altogether.

So the people of the north fought the people of the south. 

It was really bad and alot of American familys suffered.

 because were supposed to be the same team. "

....Like it is stated in the article a gave a detailed summary of events depicting The Gettysburg address without giving it away by using specific terms such as civil war or Abraham Lincoln.

Getting back to my response..I noticed this aritcle also touching base on instructional shifts.
Which means this term is being reinforced yet again though this series of CCSS activities.
The differentiated use of these terms and concepts leads me to see the connections of how all these aspects of the CCSS are intertwined with each other.

To finalize, I loved the quote "developing students’ prowess at drawing knowledge from the text itself is the point of reading" because I feel it nicely sums up the meaning behind this standard.