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Teacher Notes (not visible to students)

This activity asks students to read an informational passage about a sea otter and use evidence from the text to explain the otter's behavior. Use the ReadingFluency recording to check students' oral reading accuracy and expression. For small-group or whole-class use, discuss how senses, memories, and instincts are different and model citing sentence-level evidence from the text. For the open-ended paragraph response, look for answers that refer to at least two pieces of evidence from the passage (for example, the otter’s aquarium past and the fact she was about to have a pup) and connect them to a plausible explanation. For the multimedia Frame task, a high-quality response will clearly show the student’s idea (photo, drawing, or recorded explanation) and explain—out loud or in writing—how senses, memories, or instincts might lead to the otter’s actions. Provide scaffolded sentence starters for students who need support (e.g., "I think the otter... because..."). From: "Surfing Sea Otter" - Mystery Science Unit Reading