Read and comprehend stories, dramas, poems and informational texts at the high end of the grades 4-5 band with support that fades

Learning goal: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas and poetry, and informational texts, including history/social studies, science and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range. Activate prior knowledge and draw on previous experiences in order to make text-to-self or text-to-text connections and comparisons. You will learn what makes a text hard in this band, a five-step routine for reading it, and how the help you get should shrink over the year.

What the grades 4-5 text complexity band means for you. A band is a range of difficulty that stretches across two grades. Texts at the low end of the grades 4-5 band feel like the harder books you read last year. Texts at the high end feel different in four ways. First, the sentences are longer and have more parts: a sentence may give a cause, an effect and an exception before it ends. Second, each paragraph carries more ideas, so a paragraph in a science article may explain a rule, give an example and warn about a mistake, all in five lines. Third, the vocabulary includes words you have never seen in print, including technical words in science and history and words a story uses to be precise, such as hesitated or reluctant. Fourth, the meaning is often implied: a story shows a character's grief through what she does with her hands, and an article expects you to put two facts together to reach a third that it never states. Proficiently means you read the text accurately and come away understanding it, well enough to retell it in order, answer questions from it and compare it with something else. Scaffolding as needed means that for the hardest texts in the band you may still have support, such as a teacher previewing the vocabulary, a partner to chunk with or a set of guiding questions, and that this support is meant to be temporary. One caution about measuring: a readability formula that counts only sentence length and word length, such as the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, places the story in this lesson at about grade 4.4 and the article at about grade 5.3, mainly because the story's dialogue is short. The story's difficulty lies in what it leaves unsaid, which a formula cannot count, so judge a literary text's place in the band by its implied meaning and structure as well as by its sentences.

The routine: preview, chunk, question, reread, summarize. Preview: read the title, look at headings, pictures and captions, read the first sentence of each paragraph, and activate prior knowledge by writing one or two things you already know about the topic. Draw on previous experiences as well: a story set in a grandparent's shed connects to any place you have poked around in that belonged to someone older; an article about bicycle gears connects to any hill you have pedaled up. Chunk: read one paragraph, or one stanza of a poem, or one exchange of speeches in a drama, and stop. Chunks this small suit a short, dense text at the high end of the band; in a longer book that is going well, chunk by scene, section or chapter. Question: ask what the chunk was about, what you learned or what happened, which word or sentence you are unsure of, and what the author is leaving for you to infer. Reread: return to the sentence that raised the question and read it slowly, breaking it at the commas and connecting words, and look for the definition or the clue in the sentences nearby. Summarize: state the chunk in one sentence of your own; at the end, summarize the whole text in four or five sentences that keep the order and include the implied meaning, not only the stated facts. On a history or social studies text, add the question "What changed, and what caused it?"; on a technical text like the bicycle article, reread any sentence that does a calculation until you can redo the arithmetic yourself (a date or a measurement is simply noted, since there is nothing to redo).

Connections and comparisons that deepen understanding. A text-to-self connection ties the text to your own experience; a text-to-text connection ties it to another text. A comparison names how the two are alike and how they differ. Any connection can keep you interested in a book; a connection deepens comprehension when it returns you to the text. Suppose you read the shed story and think, "My grandmother kept seed packets too." That is a beginning. It becomes a connection when you go on: "My grandmother wrote on hers in pencil, and in the story the handwriting is what stops Priya's grandfather, so the writing must matter more than the seeds." Now you are noticing something the text implies. A text-to-text comparison between the story and the article could observe that both are about a small object, a key and a cog, that does much more than its size suggests, and then note the difference: the article explains exactly how, while the story leaves you to infer why the key matters.

How the scaffolding is withdrawn. Early in the year, a teacher or adult previews the hardest words before you read, marks where to stop, supplies the questions and starts the summary. In the middle of the year, you preview alone with a partner nearby, choose your own stops, write your own questions with a partner to compare, and give the summary while someone checks it against the text. By the end of the year, you preview silently, chunk where you need to, keep your questions in a reading log, reread without being reminded and write a summary that a teacher only reads. Each support is removed once you have shown you can do that step yourself, and the goal is to be reading texts at the high end of the band with the fewest supports you can manage, not none on the first day.

The misconception, and why it is wrong. Many readers believe that having to reread a sentence means they read it badly, so they push on instead. At the high end of the band, rereading is not failure; it is the step that turns a long sentence into meaning. A reader who rushes past "Someone had set it on the nail, and nobody, in all the years since, had moved it" will miss that "all the years since" points to something that happened long ago and has not been talked about. A second misconception is that a connection is anything the text reminds you of. A connection that stays about you adds little to your understanding of the text; a connection that sends you back to a line adds understanding.

A worked model inside the lesson. Take the second paragraph of the bicycle article. Preview has already told you that the article explains why bikes have gears. Chunk: the paragraph about the chainring and the cog. Question: "What is a cog, and why does the number of teeth matter?" Reread: the sentence "the chain pulls the cog around once for every twelve links" comes right after the cog is described as having twelve teeth, so a cog is the small toothed wheel at the back, and one tooth catches one link. Reread the arithmetic: forty-eight links from the chainring, twelve per cog turn, four turns. Summarize: "Each turn of the pedals pushes forty-eight links of chain, and a twelve-tooth cog turns four times for those links, so the wheel turns four times per pedal turn." The paragraph carried three ideas, and the summary keeps them all.

Original story — The Key on the Nail

Priya's grandfather kept his shed the way other people keep a museum: everything in its place, nothing to be touched. So it took her three visits to work up the nerve to ask about the key.

It hung on a bent nail above the workbench, brown with rust, too small for any door. Someone had set it on the nail, and nobody, in all the years since, had moved it.

"What does it open?" she asked.

Her grandfather did not look up from the birdhouse he was sanding. "Nothing anymore," he said, which was not the same as answering.

Priya was not the kind of person who could leave a question alone. Over the next week she tried the key in the padlock on the gate, in the drawer of the workbench, in the little door of the birdhouse itself. It fit none of them. Her grandfather watched her try and said nothing, and the saying nothing began to feel like a room she was not allowed into.

On Saturday it rained, and the two of them sat in the shed listening to it drum on the tin roof. Priya's eyes wandered to the shelf above the paint cans, where a dented cookie tin sat behind a coil of rope. It had a tiny lock. She looked at her grandfather. He was looking at the tin too.

"Go on, then," he said, so quietly that she almost missed it.

The key turned with a complaint of rust. Inside were seed packets, dozens of them, each one labeled in a small, careful hand that was not her grandfather's: sweet peas, runner beans, marigolds, with dates from before Priya was born. Some of the packets were empty. Some were still full.

Her grandfather reached past her and lifted out a packet of marigolds. He turned it over and read the handwriting for a long time, though it was only one word and a date.

"She always said marigolds keep the beetles off the beans," he said at last. "I never got around to finding out if that's true."

Priya looked at the rain, which was easing, and at the muddy strip of garden beyond the door that nobody had dug for years. "We could find out," she said.

He put the packet in her hand. His own hand, she noticed, was not quite steady. "We could," he agreed, and went to look for the spade.

Original article — Why a Bicycle Has Gears

Pedal a bicycle up a steep hill in the wrong gear and your legs will tell you something is wrong within a few seconds. Pedal the same hill in the right gear and the climb becomes hard but possible. The difference is not in your legs. It is in a handful of toothed wheels and a chain.

Look down at a bicycle from the side. The pedals are fixed to a large toothed wheel called the chainring. Suppose it has forty-eight teeth. A chain loops around the chainring and back to a much smaller toothed wheel on the rear hub called a cog. Suppose the cog has twelve teeth. Every time you turn the pedals once, the chainring pulls forty-eight links of chain past. Each tooth of the cog catches one link, so the chain pulls the cog around once for every twelve links. Forty-eight links divided by twelve links per turn means the cog, and the rear wheel attached to it, turns four times for every single turn of the pedals.

Four wheel turns for one pedal turn is a high gear. A bicycle wheel is roughly two meters around, so one full turn of the pedals carries you about eight meters. That is wonderful on flat ground, where you want to go far with each stroke. On a hill it is a problem, because the same turn of the pedals has to lift you and the bicycle eight meters along a slope, and your legs are not strong enough to do it quickly.

A gear lever solves the problem by moving the chain onto a bigger cog. With a twenty-four-tooth cog, forty-eight links turn the cog only twice, so one turn of the pedals moves you about four meters instead of eight. Each turn of the pedals is easier, because your legs push only about half as hard, but you have to pedal twice as many turns to travel the same distance, so the whole climb takes the same total work. That is a low gear. Nothing about the bicycle became stronger; you simply traded distance for ease.

This trade is the whole secret of gears. A high gear gives more distance per pedal turn and demands more force. A low gear gives less distance per pedal turn and demands less force. A rider shifts down before a hill and up when the road flattens, matching the gear to the effort the legs can supply.

Bicycles are not the only machines that make this trade. Cars, hand drills, egg beaters and wristwatches all contain gears that swap speed for force or force for speed. Learn to read the teeth, and you can predict what every one of them will do.

Original poem — Seed Packet

Her pencil letters, small and neat,
still slant across the paper square:
one word, Marigold, and a date,
as if she planned to still be there.

The seeds inside are brown and thin
and light as crumbs and dry as dust,
and yet they kept what they were given
the way a folded letter must:

they say nothing till a hand
that knows them opens them, and then
they say it all. Plant them in May.
By August, gold will write again.

Original drama scene — The Hill

Characters: MAYA, ten; her uncle RAY. Setting: the bottom of a steep street on a hot afternoon. MAYA stands over her bicycle, breathing hard. RAY walks his own bike up beside her.

MAYA: I can't get up it. My legs just stop.

RAY: What gear are you in?

MAYA: (looking down at the chain) The smallest cog at the back. It's the fastest one.

RAY: Fastest on flat ground. On a hill it's the hardest to push. Pedal easy and click the lever twice.

(MAYA rides a slow circle at the bottom of the street, pedaling gently, and clicks the lever. The chain rattles onto a bigger cog.)

MAYA: Now my feet go around and around and I hardly move.

RAY: You hardly move each push. But you can keep pushing. Go on.

(MAYA pedals up slowly and steadily. At the top she stops and turns around.)

MAYA: (calling down) It's the same hill!

RAY: (calling back, smiling) Same hill. Different trade.

Original history article — The Road Across Ohio

In the early 1800s, travel west over the mountains and across Ohio was slow and difficult. The United States government decided to build a real road, the National Road, from Cumberland, Maryland, toward the Mississippi River. Work began in 1811. The road reached the Ohio River at Wheeling in 1818 and reached Columbus in 1833.

Building it was slow, hard work. Crews broke rock and gravel by hand and laid it in trenches to make a firm road. Mile markers along the edge told travelers how far they had come.

Towns grew along the road, with taverns where travelers could eat and sleep and with blacksmith shops and stables. Today much of the route is followed by U.S. Route 40, and old mile markers, taverns and inns still stand beside it.

Worked routine on the story, with scaffolding shown: Preview: the title names a key, the first line says the shed is "like a museum," so the key is something kept but not used; prior knowledge says old keys usually open something someone has forgotten or does not want to talk about. Chunk 4 ("Nothing anymore"): question, "Why is that not the same as answering?" Reread: "anymore" admits the key once opened something, so the grandfather is avoiding the question rather than saying he does not know. Chunk 5 ("the saying nothing began to feel like a room"): this is figurative; reread and the comparison shows that his silence keeps Priya out of something the way a locked room would. Chunk 8 (the seed packets): question, "Whose handwriting?" The text says only "not her grandfather's" and later "She always said," so the best-supported inference is that the packets belonged to Priya's grandmother, who has died, and that the tin has stayed locked because he could not face it; the story never says so, which is why the reader should hold it as the likeliest reading and check it against every later clue. Final chunk: "his own hand was not quite steady" implies feeling the text never names. Summary: "Priya keeps asking about a rusty key her grandfather will not explain. When he finally lets her open a tin, it holds seed packets labeled by her late grandmother. Reading the handwriting moves him, and Priya's offer to test the marigolds gets him to pick up a spade for a garden he had left untouched for years." Every sentence of that summary includes something implied.

Worked routine on the article, done with fewer supports: Preview: the title asks why bikes have gears; the first sentences of each paragraph show the article moves from the problem on a hill, to how the chain and cogs work, to high gear, to low gear, to the general rule, to other machines. Prior knowledge: I have shifted gears and felt pedaling get easier. Chunk 2: two new words, chainring and cog, each defined in its own sentence; the arithmetic is forty-eight divided by twelve equals four. Chunk 3: a wheel is "roughly two meters around," so four turns is about eight meters; the question "Why is that bad on a hill?" is answered in the next sentence. Chunk 4: with a twenty-four-tooth cog the cog turns twice, four meters per pedal turn, easier but twice as many turns. Chunk 5: the rule, high gear more distance and more force, low gear less of both. Whole-text summary: "A bike's pedals turn a chainring that drives a smaller cog through a chain. The number of teeth decides how many times the wheel turns per pedal turn: forty-eight over twelve gives four turns, a high gear that goes far but is hard to push; forty-eight over twenty-four gives two turns, a low gear that is easier but covers half the distance. Gears trade distance for ease, and other machines make the same trade."

Worked text-to-self and text-to-text connection: Text-to-self: "When my chain slipped onto the big cog by accident, my legs spun fast and I barely moved." Return to the text: that is the low gear the article describes, two wheel turns per pedal turn, four meters per pedal turn. The connection confirms the article's claim from experience. Text-to-text comparison: the story and the article both hinge on a small object with a large effect, a key that opens years of silence and a cog whose teeth decide how a whole bicycle behaves. The article states its effect exactly, in numbers; the story never states why the key matters and makes the reader infer it from a shaking hand and a word on a packet. Alike in shape, different in how much the reader must supply.

Worked routine on the poem and the drama scene, with support shown and then removed: Poem, with a guiding question supplied by the teacher: "Who is 'she,' and how do you know?" Chunk by stanza. Stanza 1: pencil letters, one word and a date, written "as if she planned to still be there," so the writer expected to see the flowers and did not. Stanza 2: reread "the way a folded letter must"; a folded letter keeps its words hidden until someone opens it, so the seeds are keeping something, the flowers she meant to grow. Stanza 3: reread the last line. Marigolds bloom gold, so "gold will write again" means the flowers will be like her handwriting coming back when they open. Summary: "A packet of marigold seeds is labeled in the pencil writing of a woman who is gone; the seeds have waited like an unopened letter, and if they are planted in May they will bloom by August as if she were writing again." Text-to-text: the poem could be about the packet Priya's grandfather reads for a long time, and it says in images what the story leaves unsaid. Drama, with no guiding question supplied: the reader chunks at each stage direction and asks what each character wants. Maya wants to reach the top; Ray wants her to see why she cannot. The stage direction "The chain rattles onto a bigger cog" is the turn, and the article says a bigger cog is a low gear. Ray's last line, "Same hill. Different trade," is the article's rule in three words: she traded distance per pedal turn for ease. Summary: "Maya cannot climb a hill in a high gear; her uncle has her shift to a bigger cog, and she climbs slowly but steadily, learning that the hill did not change but the gear did."

Worked routine on the history article, with fewer supports: Preview: the title and the first sentences show a problem (slow, difficult travel), a solution (a national road) and results (towns). Question for a history text: "What changed, and what caused it?" Chunk 1: reread the dates in order, 1811, then Wheeling in 1818, then Columbus in 1833, so the reader can see the road took more than twenty years to reach the middle of Ohio. Chunk 2: the technical detail, rock and gravel broken by hand and laid in trenches, answers "what made this a real road?" Chunk 3: the cause and effect the article leaves the reader to state: travelers needed food and rest, so towns grew. Summary: "Because travel west was slow and difficult, the United States built the National Road of broken rock and gravel, which reached Columbus in 1833; towns grew along it, and U.S. Route 40 follows much of it today."

Reading log: Over the coming weeks, read at least six texts at the high end of the grades 4-5 band: two stories, one poem, one drama or play scene, and two informational texts, one from history or social studies and one from science or a technical how-it-works source. For each, keep a log page with the five steps. Under preview, write two things you already knew. Under chunk, write how many stops you made and where the hardest one was. Under question, write three questions you asked. Under reread, copy the longest sentence you reread and rewrite it as two or three short sentences that mean the same. Under summarize, write four or five sentences covering the whole text in order, including at least one thing the author implied. Add one text-to-self or text-to-text connection and the line it sent you back to, and tick which supports you still used.

Independent performance: Choose a new text you have not read, at the high end of the band, in any of the four kinds (story, drama, poem, informational), and read it with the routine using the fewest supports you can. Then show your understanding to a teacher. Success criteria: your preview names the kind of text and two things you already knew; you chunked the text yourself and asked at least four questions in your log; you reread at least two sentences and can explain the parts of each; your summary keeps the order of the text, includes its implied meaning and adds nothing that is not there; you make one comparison, text-to-self or text-to-text, that names a likeness and a difference and returns to a specific line; and you can list which supports you used and which you did not.

Scaffold review: After the performance, mark on the support table which column you are in for each of the five steps and pick one step to move one column to the right before the next text.