In this new book, you’ll learn how to teach evidence-based writing using a variety of tools, activities, and sample literary texts. Showing elementary and middle school students how to think critically about what they’re reading can be a challenge, but author C. Brian Taylor makes it easy by presenting twelve critical thinking tools along with step-by-step instructions for implementing each one effectively in the classroom. You’ll learn how to:

• Design units and lesson plans that gradually introduce your students to more complex levels of textual analysis;
• Encourage students to dig deeper by using the 12 Tools for Critical Thinking;
• Help students identify context and analyze quotes with the Evidence Finder graphic organizer;
• Use the Secret Recipe strategy to construct persuasive evidence-based responses that analyze a text’s content or technique;
• Create Cue Cards to teach students how to recognize and define common literary devices.

The book also offers a series of extra examples using mentor texts, so you can clearly see how the strategies in this book can be applied to excerpts from popular, canonical, and semi-historical literature. Additionally, a number of the tools and templates in the book are available as free eResources from our website ( so you can start using them immediately in your classroom.