History
Topic Sentence
- What is the main thing or person that the paragraph is about?
- Why is that thing or person important?
Primary Source
- What does this source say? (Content)
- Who is the author? (Social position, profession, political affiliations, age, any other relevant personal detail)
- What is the writer's purpose?
- What does he/she have to lose or gain by convincing others of his/her position?
- What events led to this piece of writing?
- What happened as a result of this writing?
Literature
Novel or Story
- Whom is this book about? (central character[s])
- What do the central characters want?
- What keeps them from getting it?
- How do they get what they want?
- Do they have an enemy or enemies? Is there a villain?
- What does the villain want?
- What do you think is the most important event in the story?
- What leads up to this event?
- How are the characters different after this event?
- What is the most important event in each chapter?
- How many different stories does the writer tell?
Biography
- What kind of family did the subject come from?
- What were his parents like?
- Where did he go to school?
- What did he want the most as a child? As a grown-up?
- How did he go about getting it?
- Name three or four important people in his life.
- Did he get married? To whom? When?
- Did they have children?
- What was the most important event in his life?
- Name three other important events in his life.
- Did he get what he wanted in life? Why or why not?
- Why do we still remember this person?
Evaluation
- What was the most exciting part of the book?
- What was the most boring part of the book?
- Did you like the character[s]? Why or why not?
- Did you hope that she would get what she wanted?
- Did any part of the book seem particularly real?
- Did any part of the book seem unlikely to you?
- Did you hope it would end in another way? How?
- Would you read this book again?
- Which one of your friends would enjoy this book?
Science
Experiment
- What question am I trying to answer? (state the question)
- What could the answer be? (form a hypothesis)
- How will I test this answer?
- Materials used
- Steps of the experiment
- What result did I get?
- Does this agree with the answer I thought I would get? If not, what answer should I give instead?
`