in a text.
2 Students ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 1: What the Student Does
Literature
K Gist: Students ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which words, pictures, and sentences help me know this?
1 Gist: Students ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which words, pictures, and sentences help me know this?
2 Gist: Students ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to determine the key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which words, pictures, and sentences help me know this?
Informational Text
K Gist: Students ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which words, illustrations, and sentences help me know this?
1 Gist: Students ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which words, illustrations, and sentences help me know this?
2 Gist: Students ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to determine the key details in a text.
They consider:
What happens or is said in this text?
Which details (words, illustrations, and sentences) support the key ideas?
Note: Although the questions listed above are too difficult for most young students to internalize and apply on their own, we share them to give teachers a detailed sense of what their students should be striving toward as learners. K–2 students may not be able to ask these questions of themselves independently, but teachers can use them as a jumping-off point for lesson content and as prompts and reminders to share with students. Over time and with instruction, students will be able to pose these questions on their own.
Grades K–2 Common Core Reading Standard 1: What the Teacher Does
To teach students how to read closely:
Before introducing a text, identify the main idea or message for yourself. Go through the book and notice the details that support it and flag them with sticky notes. Then, plan out prompts and questions that you will pose to students. We liken this process to Hansel dropping those pebbles leading homeward; by planning questions ahead of time, you can more easily guide students to spot the main idea. Conversely, when teachers don’t plan, lessons can go awry. For example, if the main idea of a passage is that cities create heat (cars, buildings, people) and thereby change the weather, and you don’t recognize that this is what students should be reading for, then it becomes difficult to pose a proper “trail” of questions leading students toward the text’s significant details.
During a lesson or while conferring, be sure to give students sufficient time to consider the questions and prompts you pose. Figuring out the author’s main idea or message is often hard, subtle work. Don’t hesitate to rephrase prompts if students seem stuck. Remind them that they can look for answers in the text, reread, study illustrations, and so forth. Providing time for students to respond can make all the difference in the world.
Use a text or passage that is brief enough to be read more than once, so that students can begin with an overall understanding before homing in on specifics. As you read, pause occasionally to pose questions about words, actions, and details that require students to look closely at the text or illustrations for answers. (Note: When your goal is to demonstrate where in the text you found something to support your reasoning, make sure that the text is large enough for students to see and interact with. Charts, enlarged texts, and whiteboards help.)
Model close reading by thinking aloud as you scrutinize a text’s words, sentence structures, and other details to understand its meaning. To focus students’ attention, write on sticky notes and place them on the text, use chart paper, annotate in the margins, and/or highlight via a tablet or whiteboard.
To help students to determine what the text says explicitly:
Model how to determine an author’s message by saying what happened (literature) and naming the important facts (informational). As you do, point to words, sentences, illustrations, and text features as evidence and record on chart paper or graphic organizers (see online resources at resources.corwin.com/literacycompanionk-2).
Over weeks of working with different texts, continue to guide students to determine deeper meanings on their own. Use sentence stems and other graphic organizers to support students’ explanations of what happened and their recall of important facts; use think-alouds so students hear how you arrive at what texts mean, and point to specific places in the text to support your conclusions.
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
