Close Reading, STEM, and Growth Mindset

Looking for a way to teach students close reading, STEM, AND growth mindset?

Our newest close reading packet, A Study of the Inventing Process and Mindset of Inventors: Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, does just that.

Through carefully constructed close reading lessons, your students will dig deeply into challenging texts, examining what the text says, how it works, what it means, and what it inspires them to do. They will learn how to use details from a text to support their thinking and integrate knowledge from multi-genres: historical fiction, text excerpts, non fiction, videos, photographs, and quotes.

These close reading lessons will help your students learn not only how to use details from the text to support their thinking and think critically about challenging text, they also address so many of the Common Core Language Arts Standards and each level of Webb's Depth of Knowledge!

The unit begins with the picture book, The Inventor’s Secret: What Thomas Edison Told Henry Ford, which will inspire all students with the tale of how these two men achieved success through goal setting, perseverance, and learning from their mistakes. 


Through a STEM Mint Mobile Challenge students will better understand the invention process and the mindset it takes to invent. In this challenge, students create, using readily available materials, the fastest car, and a car that can roll the farthest.

Students create a Top Tab Inventor's Log Foldable® to record their process as they create their Mint Mobiles. We’ve included a printable cover and cutting guide and step-by-step directions for how to make the Top Tab Inventor's Log Foldable® and how to use it during the STEM Mint Mobile Challenge.

The text dependent questions, connections across multi-genre texts, and student response activities in this packet will guide students to think critically as they learn about the inventions of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, their growth mindset, and the invention process they went through.