“Backward Step” by Paul Jennings Close Reading Questions

Help high school students extend beyond general reading comprehension and support the development of close reading analysis skills with this set of rigorous, text-dependent questions on the science fiction short story “Backward Step” by Paul Jennings. An answer key is included. Materials are delivered in printable Word Document and PDF formats. By completing this activity, students will:

• Identify what the text states explicitly as well as implicitly
• Analyze the author’s decision to have the narrator directly address the reader in the exposition
• Apply knowledge of literary devices including euphemism and onomatopoeia
• Discern the intended effect of a given detail (“People from the university wanted to study me”)
• Make logical inferences about what a given excerpt reflects about the human condition (“Fortune-tellers and mystics claimed they had moved me in time. I was on television all over the world.”)
• Articulate similarities between the five-year-old protagonist and his grandmother
• Determine the function of a given excerpt (“I was lying on a seat on the other side of the road. An old man sitting next to me looked as if a ghost had just appeared in front of him. He screamed and ran off as fast as he could go.”)
• Identify techniques used to convey the narrator’s childlike voice
• Conduct brief research into the Grandfather Paradox
• Determine a theme that is reinforced by the story’s resolution
• Write clearly, concisely, and accurately in response to analytical questioning
• Exercise rational thought
• Cite textual evidence in support of claims