Chapter 15: Informational Reading

1. Chapter 15: Informational Reading Teaching Reading Sourcebook 2nd edition

2. Informational Text • Informational or expository text tends tobe more complex, diverse, and challenging than narrative text. • It is important to integrate expository texts in language arts instruction and integrate comprehension into content-area teaching. • Types of informational texts include • instructions, brochures, catalogues • directions, recipes, manuals, signs • magazine and news articles, websites, textbooks

3. Informational Text Structure • Informational text structures include • Description: explains or defines topic or concept • Compare-Contrast: presents similarities and differences • Cause-Effect: presents reasons an event happened and its results • Problem/Solution: poses a problem and suggests possible solutions • Time Order (Sequence): groups ideas by order or time

4. Graphic Organizers • Concrete representations of informational text structure provide students a means to • record information about underlying text structure; • see how concepts fit within the structures; • focus on the most important ideas; • examine relationships among concepts; • recall key text information; • write well-organized summaries.

5. Considerate Texts • Three overlapping features characterize and help to define considerate texts. • Structural cues: introductions, summaries, titles, headings, charts, tables, type font, bullets etc. • Coherence: clarity of writing in explicitly stated main ideas, information supports development of main idea, logical order of events and ideas, use of signal words, precise language, smooth transitions • Audience appropriateness: conceptual density or the number of new concepts introduced

6. Strategy Application • Recognizing informational text structurecan be developed through • detecting signal words; • noting graphic features (e.g. headings, tables, etc.); • creating graphic organizers to lay out or organize information. • Monitoring comprehension when reading to learn new information requires metacognitive awareness • knowledge about ourselves as learners • knowledge of the tasks we face • knowledge of the strategies we use

7. Strategy Application • Connecting to World Knowledge • Students learn new information by connecting it to knowledge from their prior experience. • Readers’ world knowledge shapes the way they perceive information in text. • The K-W-L procedure can be used to tap prior knowledge. • K- assessing what students know • W- assessing what students want to learn • L- noting what students have learned from the text

8. Strategy Application • Predicting • Students make predictions about informational text by scanning structural cues that indicate its organization. • Students make predictions about the purpose of the text as a whole, as well as the functions of various parts of the text. • Previewing the text in this way organizes students’ thinking, preparing them to learn new information presented in the text.

9. Strategy Application • Asking Questions • Students need instruction in how to ask higher-level questions to help them learn from informational text. • In the strategy elaborative interrogation, students ask why a fact makes sense, which helps them explain or expand text information and better remember it. • Answering Questions • The QAR framework is a type of question-answering instruction that focuses on a three-way relationship among question types: 1.Right There 2.Think and Search 3. On My Own 4. Author and Me.

10. Strategy Application • Constructing Mental Images • Readers can create pictures in their minds, which depict the content of the text. • Think aloud models help students to learn the thinking processes needed to visualize. • Summarizing strategies • Paragraph shrinking: identify main ideas:shrink it into one sentence 10 words or less • Collaborative Strategic Reading: substitute a more general term for a list of terms; delete redundant information; delete information that is not central to overall meaning; select or create a topic sentence

11. Reader Response • Even when reading informational text, students use their existing knowledge to respond to the author’s point of view and bias. • Discussion-Oriented Instruction such as Questioning the Author (QtA) teaches students to question what they read, to think, to probe, to associate, and to critique. • Writing for Content-Area Learning provides opportunities for response to informational text by writing reviews of texts, making improvements to texts, and creating their own informational texts.

12. Motivation and Engagement • Engaged Readers • are motivated; • are knowledge driven; • are socially interactive; • believe in their reading skills; • persist in the face of difficulty; • possess a variety of cognitive comprehension strategies.

13. Web-Based Text • The benefits of Web-based text • Readers can follow links to definitions, background, and more detailed explanations to support comprehension. • Readers learn more easily from Web-based than printed text as long as options for navigation and browsing are limited. • Electronic text can be more motivating especially for struggling readers. • Reading on the Web requires additional demands on the reader in specialized strategy application.

14. When to Teach • Primary grade students need increased instructional time with informational text. • Young children often prefer age-appropriate informational text, which builds world knowledge. • After grade 3, reading content-area texts becomes increasingly important to expand their knowledge. • It is critical to balance and integrate explicit comprehension strategies instruction with emphasis on the content of the text.

15. When to Assess and Intervene • It is necessary to assess comprehension processes as well as outcomes • When assessment reveals that students are misusing or not using a specific strategy, additional instructional support is required • Comprehension Assessment Response Formats include • cloze: maze CBM • open ended/ multiple choice questions • retelling • think aloud protocol