Answer:
Knowing the answer is one thing...but being able to justify your thinking by citing text is an entirely different type of skill. Taking the text and combing through it, like an old man at the beach with a metal detector, determined to find some treasures, not only takes strong reading comprehension skills but also takes some perseverance, to find what we're looking for.
Here are the six steps I use in my classroom, to teach this important reading skill:
1. Teach the Specific Steps to Cite Text Evidence
No secrets here...I'm a firm believer in teaching kids explicitly how to do the skills we want them to have, whether it's reading or math or any other subject. Often times, I like to make my thinking public, so that my modeling will give the kids an idea of what they can do to reach a particular learning goal. Mentor texts are a great tool to use here and can be read in one sitting, using lots of examples.
About the steps...To cite text evidence, we talk about how we need to read the whole text first (duh, but some kids might just try to skip this part and just try to answer the questions). Then, we read the question and think about how we might answer it.
Once we figure out our answer, we go back to the text and search for specific parts of the text, that will help us justify our answer. We make sure to take some time to discuss what it means to justify something and the kids enjoy this part a lot. For example, justify why you should have recess... Justify why you should be able to have a cell phone... Justify why you should be able to have a sleepover... Like little lawyers in the making!
