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ОглавлениеCHAPTER 2
Find It or Figure It Out
Have you ever asked your students a question about something they read and had them respond, “I don’t know; it didn’t say”? Many students are literal when they read. They expect to find all the answers to questions directly in the text. In reality, most of the thinking you do as you read is not literal. Your brain puts information you read together with information you know and figures out many things that the text does not directly state. If you read the weather forecast, and the chances of rain are 100 percent, you figure out that you probably need to rethink your plans for a barbecue this weekend. Figuring out something based on information from the text is inferring. Find It or Figure It Out is a lesson framework you can employ to teach your students how to use the information in the text and their prior knowledge to figure things out. The major emphasis in Find It or Figure It Out lessons is teaching students how to make logical inferences and cite textual evidence to support them. Using the gradual release of responsibility model of instruction, Find It or Figure It Out combines student trios and teacher-led collaborative conversations to discuss various aspects of the text’s content.
A Sample Find It or Figure It Out Lesson
Mr. E. decides to use Find It or Figure It Out to teach his students how to make and support inferences as they read a section about tropical rain forests in their science texts. He reads the text and constructs prompts for each two-page spread in the book. He makes sure that the answers to the Find It questions are quite literal and that students can find them in the text in a sentence or two. His Figure It Out questions require students to make logical inferences. There are clues that help them figure out the answers.
This is the first Find It or Figure It Out lesson this class has experienced. Mr. E. follows the gradual release of responsibility model of instruction when teaching comprehension lessons. Working with the whole class, he establishes the purpose for the lesson, builds meaning for important vocabulary, and models how to answer one question. He then asks the whole class to help him answer the second question. Next, the class works in trios to answer the remaining questions. He has organized the trios so each has a range of reading levels and has also tried to put students together who like to work with one another.
TIP
Small groups in elementary classrooms work best if the group size is not too large. When working together in trios, all three students participate, and rarely does anyone sit on the sidelines.
Purpose Setting and Vocabulary Building
The lesson begins with the students gathering in their assigned trios. Mr. E. hands one copy of the Find It or Figure It Out: Tropical Rain Forests question sheet (see figure 2.1) to each trio, and the person who gets the sheet quickly positions him- or herself between the other two. He gives the other two students small sticky notes in two different colors. Next, he establishes the lesson purpose.
Figure 2.1: Sample Find It or Figure It Out: Tropical Rain Forests question sheet.
He says, “Shortly, I am going to give you a piece to read about tropical rain forests. As you read it, you are going to find the answers to some questions and figure out the answers to others. The answers to the Find It questions will be right there on the page. When you find these answers, you will put a green sticky note on them to show where you found them. The answers to the Figure It Out questions will not be right there on the page, but there will be clues in the text to help you figure them out. You are going to use the yellow sticky notes to mark the details from the text that are clues you used to answer the Figure It Out questions. Before we start reading about tropical rain forests, however, we need to use our collective class knowledge to build meanings for some key words. Read the first question with me, and tell me what you think the key vocabulary words are.”
The class reads the first sentence chorally: “Figure out if there are any rain forests in Africa and Australia.” The students decide that rain forests, Africa, and Australia are important vocabulary words. Mr. E. directs their attention to the world map, and the students identify Africa and Australia. He then tells them that a rain forest is a forest that gets a lot of rain. When Mr. E. asks if anyone has ever seen a rain forest, one student describes the movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Other students report having seen programs on the Discovery Channel about rain forests. Some suggest finding cool videos on YouTube, and Mr. E. says that is a good idea and he will investigate.
Next, the class reads the second sentence chorally: “Find out the average high and low temperatures in a tropical rain forest and the average amount of rain.” The students decide that high and low temperatures and tropical are important vocabulary words. Mr. E. leads them to talk about the high and low temperatures where they live and then writes the words tropics and tropical on the board. He asks students to tell how these words are related. Students volunteer that they think the tropics are a place where it gets very hot and that tropical describes a rain forest in the tropics that is probably very hot.
Together, the students read the remaining sentences. They jointly decide on key vocabulary words and share their collective knowledge. No one knows what epiphytes are, and Mr. E. says their reading will help them figure that out. He has the students pronounce the word epiphytes several times and points out that ph has the sound they know from words such as phone and elephant.
TIP
Seizing every opportunity to point out morphological relationships between words will help your students rapidly increase the size of their meaning vocabularies.
I Do, and You Watch
Once the students have read all the sentences chorally, and Mr. E. has developed meanings and pronunciations for vocabulary, he hands the text to the middle person in each trio.
He says, “Now, I am going to show you how I figure out the answer to the first question: ‘Figure out if there are any rain forests in Africa and Australia.’ I am going to read the page aloud and tell you what the clues are that helped me figure it out.”
Mr. E. reads the page aloud and then thinks aloud, saying, “‘The most important rain forests are near the equator, in the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.’ It doesn’t say anywhere if there are tropical rain forests in Africa and Australia. But I can use the information in the sentences and the map to figure it out. When I look at the map on this page, I see that Africa and Australia are between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. When I put that map information together with what I read in this sentence, I can figure out that there are tropical rain forests in both Africa and Australia. Let’s put a yellow sticky note on this sentence and another on the map to mark the clues I used to figure out the answer.”
When the trios have marked the clues with yellow sticky notes, Mr. E. draws their attention to the second question.
TIP
When reading on their own, students often skip over words they can’t immediately pronounce. Use the vocabulary introduction time to help them with both meanings and pronunciations.
I Do, and You Help
He and the class read it together: “Find out the average high and low temperatures in a tropical rain forest and the average amount of rain.”
He says, “Question two is a Find It question. We need to find two facts: the average high and low temperatures and the average rainfall in a tropical rain forest. Read these two pages with me, and help me find these facts.”
The students and Mr. E. read the two pages chorally: “The temperature rarely goes above 93 degrees or drops below 68 degrees. At least eighty inches of rain falls each year.” Students eagerly volunteer the answers to both questions. They mark these two sentences with green sticky notes.
TIP
Students work together and interact more when they have just one copy of the text.
You Do It Together, and I Help
Before letting the trios read and work together to answer the remaining questions, Mr. E. makes sure that they identify questions three, four, and five as Figure It Out questions and question six as a Find It question.
He says, “Begin by writing the answers to the first two questions that we did together on your Find It or Figure It Out question sheet. Then, read each question and find or figure out the answer. For the Figure It Out questions, explain to each other which sentences and pictures have clues and how these clues help you figure it out. Mark them with yellow sticky notes, and write the answer on your sheet. For question six, you will need to find the sentences that tell you what epiphytes are and how epiphytes help trees. Use your green sticky notes to mark the places where you found these answers.”
As the students work together, Mr. E. circulates the room and reminds students to explain to each other where they found answers and which sentences in the text provided clues that helped them figure out answers not right there on the page.
TIP
The “You do it together, and I help” phase of the lesson is a perfect time to listen in on the discussions your students are having and formatively assess how they are thinking and what misunderstandings they may have.
The Class Debriefs
The class gathers together, and students share their answers to the questions and where they placed their sticky notes. For the Figure It Out questions, Mr. E. leads students to share their thinking and explain how they used the text clues to figure out the answers.
Mr. E. asks students to look back through the pages read and create one more Find It question and one more Figure It Out question. They write their two questions and mark the places where they found answers or clues with yellow and green sticky notes. Mr. E. concludes the lesson by letting a few students volunteer their questions and the thinking and details they used to answer the questions.
Planning and Teaching a Find It or Figure It Out Lesson
Read the informational or narrative text and come up with Find It or Figure It Out questions. Find It questions should be literal. Students should find the answer to the question in a sentence or two. Figure It Out questions should have clues to help students figure out the answer. Include one or two questions for each page or two-page spread. Use the following seven steps when teaching a Find It or Figure It Out lesson.
1.Tell students the purpose of the lesson: “When you read, you get information in two ways. Some information is easy to find because it is right there on the page. Other information is not right there on the page, but if you look for clues, you can figure out the answer. Today, we are going to use our Find It or Figure It Out strategies to answer some questions about .”
2.Have students read each question chorally with you and build meanings for key vocabulary. Having students tell you what they think the important vocabulary is will help them learn how to identify key vocabulary. Seize every opportunity to point out morphological relations among words. Make sure students can pronounce all words, and remind them of similar words that will help them pronounce difficult words.
3.Model for students what you want them to do by using the “I do, and you watch” phase for the first question. Read the pages aloud, answer the question, and show where you found the answer or clues to help you figure it out. Explain how you used your brain and the clues to figure out answers.
4.For the second question, use the “I do, and you help” phase. Have students read the text with you and locate where they found answers or clues and explain their thinking.
5.Have students work in trios to complete the remaining questions. Circulate among your students, and be sure they locate the evidence in the text that helps them determine the answers and explain their thinking. Have them use small sticky notes to mark the places where they found the answers and the clues they used to figure out answers. Eavesdrop on the trios’ interactions to make formative assessments of students’ ability to make inferences.
6.Gather your students and have them answer the questions and explain where they found answers and clues and how their brains used the clues to figure out the answers.
7.Have students write a new Find It question and a new Figure It Out question. Share some of these with the whole class as time permits.
Find It or Figure It Out Lessons Across the Year
In subsequent lessons, as students demonstrate their ability to answer literal and inferential questions and to support their answers with evidence from the text, you should fade your modeling and turn over the responsibility for all questions to the trios. Continue, however, to begin every lesson by having students read each statement chorally with you and providing instruction on word meanings and pronunciations. When your observations of each trio’s interactions indicate that most of your students have learned to make logical inferences and to support those inferences with evidence from the text, have students answer the questions independently (“You do, and I watch”). Use the assessment results to determine which students meet the standards and which need more work on that skill.
To help students apply their inferencing skills when reading on their own, remind students as they are about to begin their independent reading time to use clues to figure out things the author does not directly state. When independent reading time is over, take a few minutes to let students volunteer one clue they figured out, read the parts of the text that led them to the inference, and explain their thinking.
How Find It or Figure It Out Lessons Teach the Standards
Find It or Figure It Out lessons teach Reading anchor standard one (CCRA.R.1) because students learn how to make logical inferences and to cite textual evidence to support the inferences they make. The lesson framework teaches Speaking and Listening anchor standard one (CCRA.SL.1) as well, because students participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners both in their small groups and with the whole class. These lessons also teach Language anchor standard six (CCRA.L.6), because the statements include general academic and domain-specific words and phrases from the text, and the teacher builds meanings as students read these together before reading the text.
CCSS in a Question It Lesson
Question It is a lesson framework to use with a short, dense, and challenging text. When you lead students through this lesson several times and gradually release responsibility to them, you are helping them learn the reading, speaking and listening, and language skills in the following standards.
Reading
CCRA.R.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.
Speaking and Listening
CCRA.SL.1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Language
CCRA.L.6: Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when encountering an unknown term important to comprehension or expression.
