De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Plants and Places [Pdf]

"Plants and Places" is a one page, nonfiction passage about how plants fit the types of environment they live in such as cactus like hot, dry weather and live in Arizona. The state flowers fit the climate of the states. It is followed by an open-ended question which requires students to provide evidence from the story; it includes underlining the most important information in each paragraph, determining the main idea, and then writing a summary of the passage using evidence from the text. This passage aligns with Common Core Anchor Reading Standards 1 and 2 requiring close reading, textual evidence, main idea, integrating ideas from different sources, and summarizing.