De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Summer [Pdf]

"Summer" is a one page, fictional, reading passage about a mother and her two children traveling from the city to the country to visit her parents for the summer. They discuss the modern conveniences they have now like cell phones and air conditioning. It is followed by constructed-response questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; it includes: sequencing, making inferences, describing character traits, finding main idea, and summarizing. This passage aligns with Common Core Anchor Reading Standards 1 requiring close reading, textual evidence, main idea, and summarizing.