Teaching Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Patricia M. Cunningham
after success with the frameworks you deemed more engaging.
We wish you every success in teaching the CCSS to all your students!
CCSS in a Guess Yes or No Lesson
Guess Yes or No is a lesson framework you can apply to any informational text. When you lead students through this lesson several times and gradually release responsibility to them, you are helping them learn the reading, speaking and listening, and language skills in the following standards.
Reading
CCRA.R.1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
RI.2.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area.
RI.3–5.4: Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade-level topic or subject area.
Speaking and Listening
CCRA.SL.1: Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
Language
CCRA.L.4: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
Source: Adapted from NGA & CCSSO, 2010, pp. 10, 13–14, 22, 25.
CHAPTER 1
Guess Yes or No
In 1978, Harold Herber, a pioneer in the field of content-area reading, proposed that teachers focus students’ attention on key information in a text by presenting them with statements and having them guess which statements were true. Students then read the text, determined which of their guesses were correct, and turned false statements into true statements. Guess Yes or No is based on Herber’s anticipation-guide strategy, a prereading tool to engage students and build new knowledge.
In Guess Yes or No lessons, students learn to read closely to determine whether statements are true or false, make logical inferences, and cite textual evidence to support their responses. Before students read the text, they read the statements together, and the teacher helps them use context and morphemic clues when appropriate to determine word meanings. Using the gradual release of responsibility model of instruction, Guess Yes or No combines student trios and teacher-led conversations to discuss various aspects of the text’s content.
A Sample Guess Yes or No Lesson
Miss G.’s class is about to read an article on Japan from the student news magazine the class has a subscription to. She wants students to read the article closely and pay attention to the facts they learn about Japan. To plan the Guess Yes or No lesson, she reads the article and constructs a sheet with ten statements, some true and some false. (See figure 1.1, page 12.) She writes the false statements so that they can be turned into true statements by changing a word or two. In addition, she includes some statements that require students to make logical inferences to decide whether they are true or false. She also includes key vocabulary words students need to be able to pronounce and understand in order to fluently read the text.
Figure 1.1: Sample Guess Yes or No sheet on Japan.
This is the first Guess Yes or No lesson Miss G. has taught to her students. Miss G. follows the gradual release of responsibility model when teaching comprehension lessons. The class will watch and listen as she models how to figure out whether the first two statements are true or false. Students will help her figure out the next two as a class. Then, the students will work together in their trios to complete the final six statements. Miss G. has assigned students to trios so there is at least one good reader and one struggling reader in each trio.
TIP
Try having your students work in trios—with a few duets or quartets—if your class doesn’t divide equally by three. In many classrooms, if the group size is too large, some students spend time vying for control of the group, and other students just sit and let the bossy ones do the work!
Purpose Setting and Vocabulary Building
The lesson begins with Miss G. working with the whole class. The student assistant for the day hands out the Guess Yes or No: Japan sheet to everyone so each student has a copy.
Miss G. then sets the purpose for the lesson.
She says, “Today we are going to be learning about Japan. I have written ten statements here about Japan, but some of them are not true facts. Before you read, you are going to guess whether each statement is true or false. You are going to write your guesses in pencil so that you can change them based on what you read in the article. It doesn’t matter how many you guess right before you read. What matters is that you can use your close-reading skills to figure out what the true facts are and change your guesses. Before we read, however, we need to read all ten statements together and make sure we know how to pronounce all the words and what they mean. Everyone read the first one with me.”
The students all read the first sentence: “Japan is on the continent of Europe.”
It is clear to Miss G. that some students don’t know the words continent and Europe because their voices drop off at those words. Continent and Europe are two key vocabulary terms Miss G. intends to focus on.
Once the class reads the first statement, Miss G. asks vocabulary-building questions: “Who knows how many continents there are in the world? Can we name them all? What continent do we live on? Has anyone ever been to another continent?”
The students share their accumulated knowledge about continents, and then Miss G. asks them to write yes or no to show whether they think Japan is on the continent of Europe. Some students are hesitant to guess and protest that they don’t know the answer. Miss G. assures them that they aren’t supposed to know and that that is why the lesson is called Guess Yes or No. She waits until everyone has written yes or no on the line before going to the next sentence.
When everyone has guessed, the class reads the second sentence together: “Mt. Fuji is a volcanic mountain in Japan.”
Again Miss G. asks vocabulary-building questions: “What is a volcanic mountain? Do we have any volcanic mountains nearby us?”
She writes the words volcano and volcanic on the board and asks if anyone has ever seen a volcano. She also helps students understand how volcano and volcanic are related, saying, “A volcanic mountain is a mountain that was formed by a volcano.”
She then waits for everyone to write his or her guess before having students read the next sentence chorally: “Japan has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.”
Miss G. helps students determine the meaning of life expectancy and makes the morphemic connection with expect. She then asks them what they think the current life expectancy is for them and their parents. The students have varied answers, and this question clearly intrigues them. Miss G. tells them that since what they are going to read is about Japan, the article probably won’t tell them about life expectancies in the United States.