Look for: There are nerves in skin, bones, muscles, and…

​: As students use the prompts and strategies outlined on Obtaining Information from Scientific Text while reading Reading: The Body’s Nervous System, they should highlight and document information in the reading that supports the following ideas:

• There are nerves in skin, bones, muscles, and other parts of the body.
• Nerve cells have a very unique structure--they have long, skinny “branches” or “tentacles” protruding from a central portion.
• The structure of nerve cells is perfectly suited for their function.
• Nerve cells branch out and connect to other nerve cells throughout the body, forming a network of nerves that carry signals between all parts of the body and the brain.

If students struggle to find the information they need in the reading, call attention to the strategies and prompts in Obtaining Information from Scientific Text. ✱Remind them to:

• Read for the gist (or central idea) by skimming the title, headings, and captions on images.
• Markup the text by keeping track of questions we have in the margins, circling key words, putting question marks by words they want to learn more about, and underlining main ideas.
• Examine images, graphs, and tables, and look for the central point of each.
• Identify the ideas from the text that support what we have figured out so far.

If students struggle to identify ideas from the text to support what they’ve figured out so far, cue them to think about the structure and function of nerves. Remind them about how the structure of blood cells supports their function, and ask them to point to ways in which the structure of nerve cells helps them perform their job. Alternatively, ask students first how the reading describes the job that nerves perform. Then ask what it is about the nerve cell’s shape that allows them to perform this job well.

If students continue to struggle with the reading, allow students to read and discuss with a partner.

Some students, particularly students with learning differences, those who are below grade-level reading, or students who are emergent multilingual learners, may require more support to successfully gather information from the reading (Lexile reading estimate: 1100L-1300L). Obtaining Information from Scientific Text is a tool that provides the kind of support these students may need. In addition, you could read the titles, subtitles, and image captions together and allow students to ask clarifying questions. You might also consider providing extra time for students to read or allow students to read with a partner. Finally, as is the case with all OpenSciEd resources, this handout is editable, and so you are encouraged to modify it to meet the needs of your students.

If you have students who need these kinds of additional support, they will benefit from using Reading: The Body’s Nervous System, which is a handout, rather than The Body’s Nerves in the student edition, so that they can annotate the text in ways that are meaningful to them.

If you find that your students are looking for a challenge, or tend not to struggle as they make sense of scientific texts, consider reducing the number of scaffolds or not providing Obtaining Information from Scientific Text. Exercise caution when eliminating scaffolds, as they are designed to help remove barriers to accessing information.