Gist: Say what the primary or secondary source says, citing evidence from the text that supports your analysis.Is this a primary or secondary source?What does the text say?What evidence can you cite to support your analysis of the text’s meaning?
8 Gist: Say what the primary or secondary source says, citing evidence from the text that supports your analysis.Is this a primary or secondary source?What does the text say?What evidence can you cite to support your analysis of the text’s meaning?
Informational Text
6 Gist: Say what happens or is said in the text, citing a piece of evidence from the text that supports your inference.What happens or is said in this text?What piece of evidence supports your inference as to the explicit meaning of the text?
7 Gist: Say what happens or is said in the text, citing several pieces of evidence from the text itself to support your inferences.What happens or is said in this text?What pieces of evidence support your inference as to the explicit meaning of the text?
8 Gist: Say what happens or is said in the text, citing several pieces of evidence from the text itself to support your inferences.What happens or is said in this text?What pieces of evidence provide the strongest support for your inferences?
Science/Technical Subjects
6 Gist: Say what the scientific or technical text says, citing evidence from the text that supports your analysis.Is this a primary or secondary source?What does the text say?What evidence can you cite to support your analysis of the text’s meaning?
7 Gist: Say what the scientific or technical text says, citing evidence from the text that supports your analysis.Is this a primary or secondary source?What does the text say?What evidence can you cite to support your analysis of the text’s meaning?
8 Gist: Say what the scientific or technical text says, citing evidence from the text that supports your analysis.Is this a primary or secondary source?What does the text say?What evidence can you cite to support your analysis of the text’s meaning?
Common Core Reading Standard 1: What the Teacher Does
To teach students how to “read closely,” do the following:
Provide students access to the text—via tablet or photocopy—so they can annotate it as directed.
Model close reading for students by thinking aloud as you go through the text with them or displaying your annotations on a tablet via an LCD projector; show them how to examine a text by scrutinizing its words, sentence structures, or any other details needed to understand its explicit meaning.
Display the text via tablet or computer as you direct students’ attention—by highlighting, circling, or otherwise drawing their attention––to specific words, sentences, or paragraphs that are essential to the meaning of the text; as you do this, ask them to explain what a word means or how it is used in that sentence, or how a specific sentence contributes to the meaning of the larger text.
Pose questions—about words, actions, or details—that require students to look closely at the text for answers.
To get students to determine “what the text says explicitly,” do the following:
Ask students to “say what it says”––not what it means, since the emphasis here is on its literal meaning.
Offer students an example of what it means to read explicitly and support your inferences with evidence; then tell them what a passage explicitly says, and ask them to find evidence inside the text to support their statement about its meaning.
Give students several pieces of evidence and ask them to determine what explicit idea in the text the evidence supports.
To develop students’ ability to “cite specific textual evidence,” do the following:
Offer them a set of samples of evidence of different degrees of specificity and quality to evaluate, requiring them to choose the one that is best and provide a rationale for their choice.
Show students how you would choose evidence from the text to support your inference; discuss with them the questions you would ask to arrive at that selection.
To “make logical inferences,” ask students to do the following:
Take what they learn (from the text about this subject) to what they already know (about that subject); then confirm that their reasoning is sound by finding evidence that supports their inferences.
Think aloud (with your guidance) about the process and how they make such inferences, and then have students find and use evidence to support their inferences.
To find the textual evidence “that most strongly supports ________,” do the following:
Create with your students—through collaborative groups or class discussion—a list of different pieces of evidence they might cite; together, develop and apply criteria by which to evaluate the different pieces to identify those which would offer the strongest, most effective support; then ask them to apply these same criteria to new evidence they find themselves as they read the rest of this article or another.
To help your English Language Learners, try this one strategy:
Repeat the process used to make such inferences, verbally labeling each step as you demonstrate it; then ask them to demonstrate their ability to do it on their own or with your prompting. Post the steps (e.g., “Inferences = What You Know + What You Learned”) with an example on a poster or handout they can reference on their own as needed.
Notes
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Preparing to Teach: Connections to My State’s Standards
Common Core Reading Standard 1: Academic Vocabulary: Key Words and Phrases
Analysis of primary and secondary sources: Primary sources are those accounts recorded from people who witnessed or participated in the event themselves; these sources include journals, letters, and oral history recordings; secondary sources are those written
