Common Core Regents ELA Exam Part 3 Text-Analysis MLK Close Read & Parallel Task

This package is a 17-page guided parallel task for Part 3 of the Common Core Regents English Language Arts Exam.

Part 3 asks students to read a passage, and in a well-developed, text-based response identify a central idea of the text and analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea.

This package focuses on the language use in an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This package includes an 18-question close reading guide to help students understand the text, and begin to analyze its literary value. This package also includes a guided planning page, lined essay paper, four exemplar responses, and instructional materials on how to present text evidence borrowed from another writer.

The rubric can be obtained online.

The close reading questions and planning page guide students toward identifying a central idea, and analyzing a writing strategy used in the development of the text.

9th graders wrote the exemplar responses.

Overall, this is a quality parallel task for 9th and 10th graders especially.