These Halloween reading passages with questions are the perfect tools to help students practice close reading skills during the month of October. This week-long lesson on The Salem Witch Trials follows a close reading model and includes a teacher guide and notes to make teaching the lesson easy! Require students to use close reading skills by practicing logical inferencing, citing text evidence, and drawing conclusions.

PRINT & GO! Easily differentiate instruction with the leveled Halloween reading passages for grades 3-5. Includes everything you need to teach a week-long close reading lesson.

⭐A digital Google Classroom option is included! (Google Slides™)

⭐Bundle and Save! You can also get this resource in the following bundle:

Close Reading Comprehension Passages | Halloween Activities | October Bundle

Halloween Close Reading Lesson:

The Witch Craze: A Dark Time in American History

This high-interest and engaging topic will captivate the interest of students!

Close Reading Step-by-Step instructions (for teacher and students) included:

#1 First Reading: Determine what the text says.

#2 Second Reading: Determine how the text says it.

#3 Third Reading: Determine what the text means.

#4 Written Comprehension: Write and Respond

Included in the Halloween Reading Comprehension Passages:

• Implementation Guide (Steps to Close Reading)
• Teacher Guide and Notes
• Classroom Posters
• Mark It Up! Annotation Cards
• 2 Differentiated Reading Passages
• Text-Dependent Questions
• Vocabulary Practice
• Written Response
• Close Reading Graphic Organizers

Easily Differentiate Instruction!

Differentiate during instruction with these Halloween reading comprehension passages! Thankfully, each is written at 2 different levels to allow for differentiation during instruction. The content of the 2 passages is the same, but the reading levels are different. Questions about the content are the same. Honestly, this makes it easy for you to provide students with the same questions and activity sheets while also allowing students to practice close reading skills on their reading level.

This resource includes all answer keys!

⭐Note: Each Hallowen reading passage is leveled with special symbols at the bottom left corner to denote difficulty levels.

This resource is aligned to the anchor standard that refers to reading text closely:

ELA Reading Standard 1: “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it, cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.”