STRATEGY FOCUS
It Says-I Say-and So
PURPOSE
This strategy is meant to support students as they summarize, react to, and make inferences about text. Teachers may provide a four column graphic organizer as a place for students to record their thinking.

PROCESS
- Create questions for students to respond to as a result of the assigned reading.
- Invite students to use a graphic organizer (see examples below) as they read to collect their thinking. Label the sections: Question(s), It Says, I Say, and So.
- The teacher poses questions for students to explore in the “Question” column.
- As students read, they capture in writing what the text says, their own thinking about the selected text, and finally a synthesis sentence to answer the initial question posed.
- Conduct class discussion to provide a time and space for students to share their thinking, hear the ideas of their peers, and to reflect on the experience.
PROBING QUESTIONS
CONSIDERATIONS
- In what ways did you find the graphic organizer helpful?
- How might you modify the graphic organizer?
- Which part of It Says-I Say-And So did you find most difficult?
- Consider using the second and third columns only and invite students to capture key ideas or points from the text (It Says) and to add their own connections, questions or responses to the text (I Say).
- In addition to text, consider using images, quotes, and other interesting representations of ideas and concepts.
SCAFFOLDS
General Scaffolds
- Use the Gradual Release model (I do/you watch, I do/you help, you do/I help, you do/I watch to provide scaffolding for students.
- Model how to respond using a Think Aloud with the graphic organizer. Have students practice the strategy with accessible content first.
- Provide examples of what student responses in each column might look like.
- In addition to text, allow students to images, quotes, or other representations of ideas and concepts.
- Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools such as anchor charts, word walls, word bank, and personal dictionaries.
- Provide students with sufficient time to think and write/draw.
- A text can be defined as anything used to gather information. This strategy can support reading comprehension of articles, videos, fictional stories, informational resources, websites, photographs, etc.
- Chunk the text to make it more accessible for students (e.g., number paragraphs, etc.).
- Conduct a Think Aloud around a paragraph to model for students how to do the strategy
- Encourage and allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools such as anchor charts, word walls, word bank, and personal dictionaries.
Scaffolds for Multilingual Learners
Entering/Emerging:
- Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources in order to recount, argue, and explain.
- Model how to write a variety of responses.
- Provide examples of what students’ responses might look like.
- Allow students to respond in a variety of ways (e.g., pictures, text, mix of English and home language, etc.).
- Provide sentence stems/frames and graphic organizers.
- Bold key vocabulary words for students to use to identify icons and match key terms and ideas to images, graphs, icons or diagrams.
- Allow students to access and use vocabulary resources and tools, such as anchor charts, word walls, word banks, and personal dictionaries (including images).
- Chunk the text to make it more accessible for students to sequence events, identify patterns, and locate main ideas.
- When watching videos, turn on captions.
Developing/Expanding:
- Model how to write a variety of responses.
- Provide examples of information presented objectively with a neutral tone.
- Provide graphic organizers to help students with organization of claims and evidence.
- Provide examples of persuasive pieces which contain a series of substantiated claims and evidence.
- Model how to summarize evidence and evaluate and challenge evidence presented in an argument.
- Pair this strategy with Main Idea–Detail Frame to help them identify topic sentences, main ideas, and details.
- Use ALM’s Interactive Read Aloud–Think Aloud strategy in order to support students’ comprehension of texts for the purpose of recounting, arguing, explaining and/or discussing.
- Model and use Reader Response in order to support students’ comprehension of texts for the purpose of recounting, arguing, explaining and/or discussing.
- When watching videos, turn on captions.
Bridging/Reaching:
- Provide examples of research reports and summaries.
- Model how to write a concluding statement that follows from and supports the information presented.
- Model how to convey sequence and show relationships among experiences and events.
- Pair this strategy with Main Idea–Detail Frame in order to support students’ comprehension of texts for the purpose of recounting, arguing, explaining and/or discussing.
- Pair this strategy with Text Coding with Margin Notes, Double Entry Organizer (DEO), Anticipation
- Guide, and Jigsaw to assist in comprehension of texts.
CONTENT APPLICATIONS
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE ARTS
Provide students with an editorial text or a review of an event. Have students use the graphic organizer to summarize the text in the second column, add their own thinking and connections in the third column, and then draw conclusions based on those columns to add to the fourth column.
VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS
Provide students with a recording of music and ask questions. Invite students to listen and record their thinking on an It Says-I Say-And So graphic organizer. Hold class discussion so that students can share their thinking, observations, and questions with peers.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Provide students with a primary document and have them use the graphic organizer to summarize (it says), react to (I say) and make an inference, connection or synthesis (an so).
HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION
As students look at a graph about physical health and disease prevention, have them use the graphic organizer to summarize (it says), react to (I say) and synthesize information/make connections (and so).
CAREER & TECHNICAL EDUCATION
As part of their work in Hospitality, provide students with various menus. Invite students to use the It Says-I Say-And So graphic organizer to record their thinking as they read and learn about various menu options. Students can be asked to consider the viability, benefits, and implications of offering such menu options in a restaurant.
WORLD LANGUAGES
Students use the It Says-I Say-And So organizer to capture information they hear as they listen to a conversation by native speakers in the target language. They will also capture unknown vocabulary they hear and questions they have. They will use this to compare with a classmate to check and add to their understanding. For the And So section, students will write additional dialogue in the target language to extend the conversation they heard on the recording.
MATHEMATICS
Share with students a sampling of data representations (tables,
charts, graphs, etc.). After studying the data, ask questions and invite students to use It Says-I Say-And So to record their ideas, questions, and inferences. Students then share ideas with partners to compare and contrast.
SCIENCE
As students look at a graph showing the change in temperature over 50 years, they record what they see in the graph, what they think it means, and how that helps them answer a question or explain a phenomenon.
REPRODUCIBLE