De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Prairie Ecology [Pdf]

"Prairie Ecology" is a one page, nonfiction passage about the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and how it works using three animals: the skipper butterfly, ground squirrel, and the bison 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, locating the main idea, and then writing a summary of the passage using evidence from the text. It also provides another assignment for students to design a prairie plant. 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.