A FREE Text Evidence Lesson!
Text Evidence... it's of huge importance in the upper elementary grades! After all, it's the first standard listed for Reading: Literature and Reading: Informational Text in grades 3, 4, and 5. I have copied each grade level's related standard below so that you can see how it progresses as students advance through the grade levels.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.1 and RI.3.1- Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as a basis for answers.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.1 and RI.4.1- Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.1 and RI.5.1- Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
As you can see, in 4th and 5th grades, students are expected to be able to answer text questions by pointing to a section of the text... 1.) that provides the exact answer and 2.) that helps them to infer an answer.
This sounds a bit confusing, but it is quite simple to teach students this concept by showing them a few passages like the one below. I would place this passage under my document camera, read the passage with my students, and label the questions as follows:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.1 and RI.3.1- Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as a basis for answers.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.1 and RI.4.1- Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.1 and RI.5.1- Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
As you can see, in 4th and 5th grades, students are expected to be able to answer text questions by pointing to a section of the text... 1.) that provides the exact answer and 2.) that helps them to infer an answer.
This sounds a bit confusing, but it is quite simple to teach students this concept by showing them a few passages like the one below. I would place this passage under my document camera, read the passage with my students, and label the questions as follows:
You can download this passage by clicking HERE.
Obviously, the first answer is right there in the second paragraph... students can point directly to the words "roller coaster" to prove their answer. However, to answer the second and third questions correctly, the students must use their inferencing skills.
After this brief discussion, I would pass out the bookmark papers to my students, and tell them that the two types of questions require slightly different sentence starters.
Download these bookmarks by clicking HERE.
The set of five sentence starters on the left is useful when the answer is stated explicitly in the text. The set of five sentence starters displayed on the right are especially useful when the students have to infer in order to reach the answer, because the answer is not explicitly stated.
After working together to write answers to the questions above by using the sentence starters on the bookmarks, I would have students cut around the outside box and then fold it in half to create a two-sided bookmark, which can now be used as a reference tool throughout your text evidence unit, and throughout the school year.
In case you are interested, I have created a number of Text Evidence teaching resources that are available in my TpT store. Just click on the images to take a closer look at them!
Thank you for stopping by!
More posts from Crafting Connections
