Start Here: The Evidence-Reading Bridge

Help learners understand a question, give their own answer and explain why a detail supports it. Then build toward an inference supported by two different clues. Designed for teachers working across Grades 5–6; choose the starting task by the learner’s response and access to short fiction.

Check the starting point

Begin with Reading Starting Point. Look separately at understanding the question, selecting a relevant detail and explaining its connection. Check access and task understanding before choosing a teaching move.

Teach, practise and look again

• Use Lesson 1 and Sharing the Score for an answer grounded in a stated reason.
• Use Lesson 2 and A Turn to Speak when learners are ready to connect two clues to a limited inference.
• Give Reading Check after teaching. Choose a focused task from the teacher guide.
• Use Reading Follow-Up after another learning opportunity, keeping its stories out of models and practice until then.

Materials and access

Use the supplied stories and student pages, with a pencil or an appropriate spoken, typed or dictated response. Read-aloud or translation can let you observe evidence reasoning; record the support when interpreting independent reading. Keep teacher keys with the teacher.

Plan two 25–35-minute teaching sessions, with checks and focused practice as needed. These are planning estimates; adjust for your learners.

Choose the student file for the task

• Reading Starting Point: one page.
• Reading: Question, Detail and Connection: four lesson and practice pages.
• Reading Check: two pages; keep these stories out of prior practice.
• Focused practice: continue, clarify, reteach or extend; select one relevant file.
• Reading Follow-Up: two different story pages; save them for later independent use.
• Talk About a Familiar Story: optional one-page family guidance using a practised lesson story.

Keep the teacher materials separate

The teacher guide supplies answers, alternatives, criteria and concrete response routes. The planning record helps capture the task, response conditions and next step. Print PDFs at actual size and check the first page on your printer; editable Word text and HTML are also supplied.

Continue with existing lessons

When a short-fiction answer is secure, try Support an Answer with Textual Evidence for a longer informational text. Use Distinguish an Inference from a Guess for further inference teaching. Choose Evidence That Answers the Question provides another evidence-selection route using a supplied claim. Write an Evidence-Based Paragraph adds a different writing demand; teach that demand before interpreting it as a reading check.

Source and use

All stories describe invented characters and events. The stories and teaching text are original Mentor Teaching materials. You may copy and adapt them for planning and classroom use under the site’s Terms of Use. No extra purchase, account or online platform is needed.