Teaching Common Core English Language Arts Standards. Patricia M. Cunningham
Figure 2.1: Sample Find It or Figure It Out: Tropical Rain Forests question sheet.
He says, “Shortly, I am going to give you a piece to read about tropical rain forests. As you read it, you are going to find the answers to some questions and figure out the answers to others. The answers to the Find It questions will be right there on the page. When you find these answers, you will put a green sticky note on them to show where you found them. The answers to the Figure It Out questions will not be right there on the page, but there will be clues in the text to help you figure them out. You are going to use the yellow sticky notes to mark the details from the text that are clues you used to answer the Figure It Out questions. Before we start reading about tropical rain forests, however, we need to use our collective class knowledge to build meanings for some key words. Read the first question with me, and tell me what you think the key vocabulary words are.”
The class reads the first sentence chorally: “Figure out if there are any rain forests in Africa and Australia.” The students decide that rain forests, Africa, and Australia are important vocabulary words. Mr. E. directs their attention to the world map, and the students identify Africa and Australia. He then tells them that a rain forest is a forest that gets a lot of rain. When Mr. E. asks if anyone has ever seen a rain forest, one student describes the movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Other students report having seen programs on the Discovery Channel about rain forests. Some suggest finding cool videos on YouTube, and Mr. E. says that is a good idea and he will investigate.
Next, the class reads the second sentence chorally: “Find out the average high and low temperatures in a tropical rain forest and the average amount of rain.” The students decide that high and low temperatures and tropical are important vocabulary words. Mr. E. leads them to talk about the high and low temperatures where they live and then writes the words tropics and tropical on the board. He asks students to tell how these words are related. Students volunteer that they think the tropics are a place where it gets very hot and that tropical describes a rain forest in the tropics that is probably very hot.
Together, the students read the remaining sentences. They jointly decide on key vocabulary words and share their collective knowledge. No one knows what epiphytes are, and Mr. E. says their reading will help them figure that out. He has the students pronounce the word epiphytes several times and points out that ph has the sound they know from words such as phone and elephant.
TIP
Seizing every opportunity to point out morphological relationships between words will help your students rapidly increase the size of their meaning vocabularies.
I Do, and You Watch
Once the students have read all the sentences chorally, and Mr. E. has developed meanings and pronunciations for vocabulary, he hands the text to the middle person in each trio.
He says, “Now, I am going to show you how I figure out the answer to the first question: ‘Figure out if there are any rain forests in Africa and Australia.’ I am going to read the page aloud and tell you what the clues are that helped me figure it out.”
Mr. E. reads the page aloud and then thinks aloud, saying, “‘The most important rain forests are near the equator, in the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.’ It doesn’t say anywhere if there are tropical rain forests in Africa and Australia. But I can use the information in the sentences and the map to figure it out. When I look at the map on this page, I see that Africa and Australia are between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. When I put that map information together with what I read in this sentence, I can figure out that there are tropical rain forests in both Africa and Australia. Let’s put a yellow sticky note on this sentence and another on the map to mark the clues I used to figure out the answer.”
When the trios have marked the clues with yellow sticky notes, Mr. E. draws their attention to the second question.
TIP
When reading on their own, students often skip over words they can’t immediately pronounce. Use the vocabulary introduction time to help them with both meanings and pronunciations.
I Do, and You Help
He and the class read it together: “Find out the average high and low temperatures in a tropical rain forest and the average amount of rain.”
He says, “Question two is a Find It question. We need to find two facts: the average high and low temperatures and the average rainfall in a tropical rain forest. Read these two pages with me, and help me find these facts.”
The students and Mr. E. read the two pages chorally: “The temperature rarely goes above 93 degrees or drops below 68 degrees. At least eighty inches of rain falls each year.” Students eagerly volunteer the answers to both questions. They mark these two sentences with green sticky notes.
TIP
Students work together and interact more when they have just one copy of the text.
You Do It Together, and I Help
Before letting the trios read and work together to answer the remaining questions, Mr. E. makes sure that they identify questions three, four, and five as Figure It Out questions and question six as a Find It question.
He says, “Begin by writing the answers to the first two questions that we did together on your Find It or Figure It Out question sheet. Then, read each question and find or figure out the answer. For the Figure It Out questions, explain to each other which sentences and pictures have clues and how these clues help you figure it out. Mark them with yellow sticky notes, and write the answer on your sheet. For question six, you will need to find the sentences that tell you what epiphytes are and how epiphytes help trees. Use your green sticky notes to mark the places where you found these answers.”
As the students work together, Mr. E. circulates the room and reminds students to explain to each other where they found answers and which sentences in the text provided clues that helped them figure out answers not right there on the page.
TIP
The “You do it together, and I help” phase of the lesson is a perfect time to listen in on the discussions your students are having and formatively assess how they are thinking and what misunderstandings they may have.
The Class Debriefs
The class gathers together, and students share their answers to the questions and where they placed their sticky notes. For the Figure It Out questions, Mr. E. leads students to share their thinking and explain how they used the text clues to figure out the answers.
Mr. E. asks students to look back through the pages read and create one more Find It question and one more Figure It Out question. They write their two questions and mark the places where they found answers or clues with yellow and green sticky notes. Mr. E. concludes the lesson by letting a few students volunteer their questions and the thinking and details they used to answer the questions.
Planning and Teaching a Find It or Figure It Out Lesson
Read the informational or narrative text and come up with Find It or Figure It Out questions. Find It questions should be literal. Students should find the answer to the question in a sentence or two. Figure It Out questions should have clues to help students figure out the answer. Include one or two questions for each page or two-page spread. Use the following seven steps when teaching a Find It or Figure It Out lesson.
1.Tell students the purpose of the lesson: “When you read, you get information in two ways. Some information is easy to find because it is right there on the page. Other