It Says-I Say-and So

1. Create questions for students to respond to as a result of the assigned reading.
2. 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.
3. The teacher poses questions for students to explore in the “Question” column.
4. 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.
5. 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.

• 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 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.