De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Traveling West [Pdf]

"Traveling West" is a one page, nonfiction passage about pioneers traveling west in wagon trains. It is followed by questions which require 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.