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

"Prairie Keepers" is a one-page, nonfiction passage about how the prairie was saved from total destruction and the efforts of the Department of Agriculture to rebuild the prairie. It is followed by questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; this 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.