Check-In
RL 4.1
Turn and Talk – Use Accountable Talk Stems
Standard RL4.1 is all about having students refer to details in a text to support their
thinking. Have students turn and talk about the characters and themes during close
reading, interactive read aloud, and guided reading instruction. Use questions and
prompts such as the ones below to help move your students’ understanding from
character attributes to theme and begin to support their thinking using text-based
evidence:
 What is your evidence to support the theme ______ in the story?
 What is the theme of this text? Can you give specific examples from the text
to support your thinking?
 What big ideas and messages keep repeating in the text? How does that help
me draw conclusions about themes in the text?
Reading Response Journal
Use a three-column response to keep track of the evidence about your character and
how your thinking is changing or questions that you have.
Character Evidence
Tracking what characters
think, say, do…
Events that impact the
character.
My Thinking and Questions
My theories of possible
themes
Some themes that may
emerge are: poverty,
oppression, hope,
discrimination, acceptance,
perseverance, loss, etc.
Stop and Jot/Sketch
Reading Response Journal
After reading the initial chapter of a narrative piece or if the setting changes, prompt
students to stop and jot or sketch what they notice about the details in the setting.
How does the setting help the reader understand the characters and theme in the
text?
Close Reading
Getting Ready to Close Read for Text Evidence
Teaching students to read in a careful way involves helping them to
acquire the vocabulary for talking about text. The more specific your
language, the more you focus your attention and your thinking. We
often used to say to students, “Take your idea about the book,” say
Check-In
RL 4.1
“because the text says,” and then find a detail from the text to support your
thinking”. But what we found was that students’ initial ideas were overly simple, or
too far removed from the text. As we studied this more closely, it turned out that
the issue was not whether they could cite text, the challenge was how they
constructed their ideas in the first place. What we came to find is that helping
students to develop clearer ideas often involves flipping the steps around:
1) Now, students tend to: have an idea, then go find evidence.
2) Instead, we can teach: gather evidence, then develop an idea.
As you teach students to gather text evidence, analyze it, and develop new
understandings, plan to pay careful attention to what they produce when
working independently.
Close Reading teaches students to
1) Look at the text evidence.
2) Find patterns in the evidence and make inferences.
3) Develop and support your idea.
Close Reading Lens: Evidence Lens
English Text: Atlantic Crossing
Spanish Text: El cruce del Atlantico
Instructional Focus: Evidence of hardships to understand characters’ reasoning.
Introduce Text Close Reading
Close Reading
Close Reading Assessment:
Vocabulary
1. Read through 2. Look For
3. Developing
Narrative or
Development
a lens.
Patterns
a new
Expository
understanding Writing
Task
Check-In
RL 4.1
Identify Genre:
Text Structure:
Read Aloud and
scaffold
vocabulary.
Read Aloud
Book
Vocabulary:
Have students
identify 3-5
words using the
following
criteria.
What words do
you need to
learn? What
parts are you
having trouble
understanding?
What clues in
the book help
you determine
the meaning of
those words?
What is a
synonym for the
word?
Have students in
pairs reread the
section titled:
Leaving Dublin Bay
(pp. 4-7)
Have students
highlight evidence
in the text that
supports the
hardships that the
characters faced.
Chart student
responses in the
first column of an
anchor chart.
In small groups
or pairs reread
the passage and
the evidence from
yesterday.
Have students
work in pairs and
find which pieces
of evidence fit
together.
Ask students to
reread the
passage to
themselves.
Review anchor
chart evidence
and patterns.
Turn and Talk
about
noticing’s.
Chart the
patterns you find
in the second
column of your
anchor chart.
Journaling and
Discussion
Questions:
Compare and
Contrast
Ireland and
America.
Discuss how the
evidence
influenced your
thinking about
Patrick’s
reasons for
coming to
America.
Explain why
Patrick’s
family
thought they
would have a
chance at a
better life in
America. Use
details from
the text to
support your
thinking.