The child reads quickly in Russian and cannot show the answer in the text.

If a child brings sheets from an American school with whole sentences colored in with yellow text markers, then they are already familiar with the method. The assignment on such sheets sounds something like this: highlight the sentence that tells you, highlight the sentence from which you learned that. What the teachers are looking for in the text is called text evidence, a reliance on the text, that is, words or fragments that support the answer. The yellow bar is just a way to highlight that support so that it is visible.

In a home setting, no one usually touches the text marked with this symbol. The text is read at home, often well, quickly, and with expression, and then the adult asks something about what they have read and gets a pause in response. In this case, the child reads the words without any noticeable difficulties, but has difficulty finding the information they need in the text. Why this happened with a particular child is unclear from just one pause; we won’t try to figure that out. Let’s try the marker.

Note and marker

For the first try, a short note on the refrigerator will do. Three lines written before leaving. «Soup in the refrigerator. Grey two minutes. Bread is in the bread bin.» The child reads it out loud in a few seconds, without punctuation and with the correct intonation, and when asked «How much to boil?» she answers in silence, then starts reading again from the first line.

The note stays where it hung; no one turns it over or covers it with their hand. The adult doesn’t ask again louder or remind them that they just read it. He hands them the same yellow marker and says the phrase that the child might have already heard in school, only in Russian. «Highlight where it says how many minutes.».

If the task is familiar, the child will find it easier to understand the request. The first line is about soup; there are no minutes in it. The second line, «Grey two minutes,» and the yellow stripe falls over it. Now you can repeat the question of how much to boil, and the answer is taken directly from the colored, two-word sentence; no one expects a complete sentence.

Why ask a second time?

The shaded line shows that the child has found a place where it is mentioned, and it does not say anything about how he understood that place. It can also be highlighted by the familiar word «minutes» in the question, «minutes» in the note, ready to go. Therefore, the question about the minutes is heard for the second time over the yellow bar, and the answer «two minutes» is given by looking at the text. I highlighted and answered, two actions, and both can be seen from the side, unlike what was happening in my head while the note was read out aloud. This will not be a complete test of understanding; it can also be highlighted and repeated by coincidence of words. The exercise is dedicated to one thing: finding information that is directly indicated in the text.

The question about the minutes is suitable for the first time because the answer is in one place and the marker is completely covered. You can ask the same question about bread; the third line. But the «What is the note about?» question is not suitable for the first time; you would have to collect the answer from all three lines and not be able to mark them all, unless you want to cover the entire note.

If the yellow bar is not placed correctly, the note is read again from any place as many times as necessary; no one looks at the clock. Re-reading helps find the correct information. The child read the words without any hesitation; the question now is whether he understood them. In an English-language school, this is called reading comprehension, and the yellow marker on the Russian note is one way to practice finding the answer in the Russian text.

In the exercise below, there are the same short texts with one question. First, choose a sentence that has an answer, then answer it out loud, looking at the text.