(] Concept - Reading Applications A second-grade teacher recently read her class a story called "The Garden" from the book Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel. The teacher is implementing a reading protocol where she has the students focus on a different aspect of the story each time she reads it aloud. During the first reading, the teacher has students focus on the sequence of events in the story. After reading the text for a third time, the teacher has students participate in a class discussion on what Toad means by "hard work" and how he overcomes the obstacles he faces in getting his garden to grow. The students work with their table group to come up with answers to questions provided by the teacher. The questions are not straightforward and require students to discuss the events of the text and form an opinion. As part of their answers, they must provide sentences from the text as proof. This activity helps students understand complex texts by: A teaching them to use textual evidence to support their claims. \/ In order to support an opinion about complex texts, students need to learn how to locate textual evidence to validate their claims.
