Using Artifacts with Nonfiction Texts

I am a big fan of using various artifacts in order to scaffold and support learning within the classroom. The artifacts help to capture student interest while also giving them the background or supplemental information that they may need to truly understand a text. I spend quite a bit of time working with struggling readers and it can be difficult to give them opportunities to engage with challenging material, while still providing the support they need to be successful.

Today I was working with a group of struggling readers from third grade and we were focusing on using evidence to support our answers to text dependent questions. I chose a nonfiction text on earthquakes because I knew that students would be learning about weather in science during an upcoming unit. Whenever I can find a way to provide support ahead of time so that these students are confident and willing to participate in their classroom, I try to do so. The problem is that this text was both challenging and dependent on students having some form of background on various topics such as; continents, plates, earthquakes. If students had absolutely no point of reference for any of these topics, they would find the text to be frustrating. I want to challenge my students, not frustrate them (although sometimes it feels like the same thing!).

This is the text that I chose. The vocabulary is very challenging for struggling readers, but with the right supports in place it is manageable. This came from the book, Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Grade 3. Before were began reading I asked students a couple of questions just to gauge their familiarity with the topic. Not one student could give me any information at all about continents or plates. They were only able to tell me that earthquakes make the ground shake. We were pretty much going into this blind :)

Knowing that this text was coming up, I found a map and decided to use that as an artifact to go along with our reading. I briefly talked with the students about our purpose for the lesson and how the artifact was supposed to be a tool to help us better understand what we were going to read that day.

I also used a diagram of the earth's layers. The conversation that connected to this was very basic, but I wanted students to connect the position of the plates in relation to earth's crust and I was hoping that they would do this independently by using both artifacts. As we read, the students were checking their own understanding by asking questions when they felt confused. If the artifact would help us answer the question, we would stop and discuss together.

The students were able to utilize both artifacts in order to support their understanding. Because I was working with struggling readers, I was happy to see how well they were able to catch on to the purpose of the artifacts and how they used them to aide their understanding. They were so engaged in the conversation about the text that by the time we moved on to answering comprehension questions with text evidence, they were more than ready!