Your Literacy Standards Companion, Grades K-2. Jim Burke

       To help students make logical inferences from a text:

       Select texts to read aloud or share with students that allow them to make logical inferences. Ask questions that lead them to infer (I wonder why he did that? I wonder what she thought? I wonder why the boy in the illustration looks sad?). As students answer these questions, ask them to explain how they arrived at their conclusions using specific words and phrases in the text.

       Routinely ask students to show you the textual evidence that supports their inferences.

       To support students in asking and answering questions about key details in a text:

       Model asking questions about a text by writing questions on chart paper or annotating in the margins when using a whiteboard. Try to ask more analytical (how, why) questions than literal (who, what, where, when) questions.

       Elaborate on what led you to ask a question. When reading a book about beavers, you might say, “Whenever I see a picture of a beaver, they’re chewing on a tree branch. I wonder why they do this?” This will help students recognize that a question is typically an extension of something we already know.

       Demonstrate how the answers to many of their questions can be found in the text. If the text is on a chart or in a big book, mark the answers to questions with sticky notes or highlighting tape, calling attention to the exact words that help answer a question.

       To help your English language learners, try this:

       Work with small groups to help students feel more comfortable sharing ideas. Make sure that each student has a copy of the text or that the text is large enough for them all to see comfortably. Allow students time to read a text or a portion of one several times to make sure they have a basic understanding before focusing on key ideas or making inferences.

       Model asking questions using a short text or poster-size photograph. Elaborate on what leads you to ask questions and point to words and illustrations that provide answers.

       Developmental Debrief:

      Students, especially those coming to school with low language skills or those who lack the necessary preschool experiences to be academically successful, need to be read to several times throughout the day. This will help them acquire the academic vocabulary and syntax they need to understand complex texts.

      In order for students to feel comfortable, it is essential for the teacher to create a risk-free environment where students are encouraged to offer their ideas and opinions openly, without fear that their responses will be judged “right or wrong,” “good or bad.”

      Notes

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      Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 1: Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases

      Cite specific textual evidence: Readers need to reference the text to support their ideas, rather than simply stating opinions or referring to personal experiences; students should be able to reference illustrations or read words or sentences from the text that prove the points they are trying to make.

      Conclusions drawn from the text: Readers take a group of details (different findings, series of events, related examples) and infer from them an insight or understanding about their meaning or importance within the passage or the text as a whole. These insights or conclusions are based on evidence found in the text.

      Explicitly: This refers to anything that is clearly and directly stated in precise detail; it may suggest factual information or literal meaning, although this is not necessarily the case.

      Informational texts: These include nonfiction texts written for a variety of purposes and audiences, such as expository texts, informational narratives (biography, history, journals and diaries, persuasive texts and essays). Informational texts include written arguments as well as visual images such as charts and diagrams.

      Key details: These are parts of a text that support the main idea and enable the reader to draw conclusions/infer what the text or a portion of a text is about.

      Literature: This refers to fiction, poetry, drama, and graphic stories as well as artworks by master painters or distinguished photographers.

      Logical inferences (drawn from the text): To infer, readers add what they learned from the text to what they already know about the subject; however, for an inference to be “logical,” it must be based on evidence from the text.

      Prompting and support: Here the teacher takes the lead role in helping students initiate a particular skill or strategy. She is likely to think aloud and model precisely what she wants students to be able to do on their own later, and to nurture their attempts.

      Read closely (close reading): This refers to reading that emphasizes not only surface details but the deeper meaning and larger connections between words, sentences, and the full text; it also requires the reader to attend to the author’s craft, including organization, word choice, and style.

      Text: In its broadest meaning, a text is whatever one is trying to read: a poem, essay, or article; in its more modern sense, a text can also be an image, an artwork, a speech, or a multimedia format such as a website or film.

      Textual evidence: Not all evidence is created equal; students need to choose those pieces of evidence (illustrations, words, or sentences) that provide the best examples of what they are saying or the most compelling references to support their assertions.

      Notes

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      Planning Page

       Standard: ___________________________________________________________________________________

      The standards guide instruction; they do not dictate it. So as you plan lessons remember you aren’t teaching the standards, but instead are teaching students how to read, write, talk, and think through well-crafted lessons that draw from the pedagogy embedded within them. Engaging lessons often have several ELA standards within them and integrate reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language.

      Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 2: Key Ideas and Details

      Standard 2: Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

      Literature