Where Text Structure Can Lead You

            In our quest to discover text structure evidence, I felt I was loosing myself, and the kids, time and effort in other reading tasks.  Was I spending too much time on it, was it that important, what was this really about?  Then I opened my eyes!  I saw what I was really teaching them!  So, here it is!

    1.    Key details and support:  When you are looking for evidence for text structures, you are pulling out key details and support for whatever the topic is, in either type of reading.  In informational text, we were defining and explaining the topic through key details.  In fiction, we were pulling out key details and support for each of the characters we were investigating! 

    2.  Main idea:  If you are pulling key details and support, this leads to the most natural learning of main idea.  You have to know what you are reading about to pull evidence and support!  

    3.  Summary!:  Yes, summary!  As we were circling and highlighting and finding and writing, it jumped out!  We were gathering information for a summary!  We could use that information, in order, to write a summary-for either type of text feature!  It was right there, and I couldn’t see it at first!

4.  Character traits:  This comes naturally in the descriptive pieces Roald Dahl writes.  Students were gathering traits about them that they could use to prove that they really understood who the character was and how their behavior impacts the text! 

Awesome!  I was so surprised!  I had it planned that we would work on summary, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about teaching it, how I would target the work for success, and it was staring at me!   And it all came together through grading a homework assignment.

            For homework, the kids have been reading nonfiction texts.  They need lots of practice with the basic and these are working.  One of the ones that they read the week I was sorting through all this thinking was Spider Silk.  As suddenly as the skills popped out to me, so did the parts of a spider-as a graphic organizer!  Spider Silk was a descriptive text that they could pull evidence from and practice all the skills above.  And, I was feeling bad about not doing a single, fun holiday activity.  So, I came up with a craftivity! Here’s what we did.

            First, I cut off the bottom of the assignment.  I didn’t want the distracted by the questions they got right or wrong.  I passed it back out for them to read and highlight.  Here’s a student using their reading journal as a guide-amazing!!

Next, they chose the 8 most important facts and wrote them on black strips of paper.  These strips could be arranged in an order that allowed them to group ideas together. 

Then they went to work on writing a summary.  I had gone through what a summary is and made a chart.  This is a copy of a chart I found on Pintrest. 

 (Sorry of the bad pic-no phone today!)

Once I approved their summary, they wrote it on the body of the spider.  Then they glued the 8 legs in the order that they used them in their summary.  The final touch was to add eyes to a head and write the main idea on the head! 

(Here's I built to show the kids)

I feel like this is what text structure really can do for kids!  It can answer so many questions and thoughts and wonders.  It is not just about what is on the page and why. It is about all this, and more.  We have two more to look closely at-compare and contrast and cause and effect!  I have questions now about how these will impact real learning, what I can do with them, and the effect it will have on the kids, and I am truly excited to find out.  And, there may be a turkey craftivity in my future!

It's All About Text Structure!

      October is Text Structure month!  No, really, it is!  At least in my class!  I had planned on looking at this much earlier than this, but we’ve finally gotten there-and I’m kind of glad it took this long!  Here’s what’s been going on so far!

         Way back in September (last week!), we started to look at sequencing.  I think we, as teachers, assume that kids really know this structure naturally.  I know I did.  Well, was I surprised, for a second year, that my students couldn’t order their knowledge in a way to be able to write about what they’ve read IN ORDER!  Students were writing, but in random order of events.  So, we backed up to basics.  I began by having the kids reread just the beginning of the story and then write about that.  And it worked!  They were able to break down the very simple parts of the story and put them in chronological order.  However, it took 3 days!  This is way to long for kids to be able to write a simple summary. 

         Now, let me back up even further.  This summer, when I was breaking apart the Test Specifications from the state, I discovered there were very specific expectations for text structure.  Questions were given that targeted the WHY of having specific structure in texts.  Yet, everything we use, including sample tests, DOESN’T have questions that target this information.  That led me to start to BUILD structures to guide my teaching-and an extensive search to FIND them too!  It was quite a search.  And a lot of work! 

         There isn’t a whole lot out there is what I discovered.  When I did stumble upon things, they were usually things for the teacher to use or basic worksheets.  So, the lingering question for me was, “What do I do for my kids, right now.”  I also wanted to use my reading journals more this year.  I have used reading journals successfully in the past, but last year it sat on the back burner frequently.  The kids are not really capable, at this point, to add lots of information to their journals.  I started to think about premade notes for them.  And that’s what I’ve done.  I made premade pages for them to put into their reading journals.  I also looked at the graphic organizers that I found throughout the professional materials that I examined. I tried to create a basic organizer for kids to use with each type of structure.  I added a basic question for completion after the first use and for after creating a replica organizer and filling it out.  Here’s how it looked in lesson format.

         First, I passed out the student page.  I had to shrink it to fit their journals (86%) and trim off the edges.  They glued it in and then I had them come over to meet.  We discussed the information on the page.  I’ve included the definition, the facts, signal words, questions to ask yourself, and a place for examples. Then I had them hit the books.  We had completed the first story in the reader, a chapter excerpt from Because of Winn Dixie.  I sent them back into the story to search and find key words and phrases that signal it is a sequenced text.  

Before I knew it, they were asking me questions about words and phrases within the families given on the list.  We had a discussion about before and begin and how they were connected.  They were writing like crazy and finding tons of evidence.  Evidence, the key of what I was hoping for.   It was actually happening!  And then, IT happened…someone asked if sequencing was about moving through time!!!  Oh, how it made my heart sing!  I made them stop, I made this child ask me again, with all kids looking, and I repeated my answer!  I also went over to our chart that we are using to show text structure types and wrote it on there!

A shift through time.  It was a magical moment!  I could see into our reading and writing future and know that I could go back to that moment to use the term over and over.  That’s what it’s supposed to be all about by the time they get to this level.  It had happened!  We were ready for the next step.

         The next step was looking at our informational text, which happened to be our science series big book that is used for the nature of science lessons.  In that text, we meet Luke Dollar, a scientists studying the fossa.  I passed out the graphic organizer and together we filled in the information.  That did take a while, which was fine because it really set the kids up on what they had to do.

        

         The next day I had them pull out their reading books again and complete the same organizer in their reading journals.  This way they have the sample in their reading journal and a completed product to help their thinking along.  They used the chapter excerpt from Lewis and Clark and Me to make the graphic organizer.  Than I had them work together to answer the questions of “How did this tool help me?"  They were able to see more clearly that both texts were sequenced even though they were two different types of writing!  Awesome!  I’m pretty excited about how well this worked!  I also think it is foundational to start with sequencing.  This is the most familiar text structure to the students.  It builds the blocks needed to go to the next step, descriptive! 

         I’m almost ready to go to descriptive and I will share how I’m doing it and how it goes soon!  In the mean time, I’ll be sharing some information on author’s perspective in the next few days! 

Informational Book Lesson Plans (and Weekly Homework Too!)

After a long first day back, I’m working on a blog post!  I decided that if I don’t do it now, I wouldn’t get to it this week.  Plus, I've been slowly working on informational book lesson plans.  My teaching partner, Lisa, and I wanted to start with a book called Plagues, Pox, and Pestilence, but Scholastic no longer has it available.  So we had to hit it with another angle.  Text structure is one of the first things on our district road map, and we want to tackle informational texts right from the get-go.  As I've been investigating this, I've discovered it isn't such an easy find.  The stuff out there is about the skill-sequencing, compare and contrast, etc.-and not so much about how to teach the structure itself.  Also, it’s hard to find a whole text on each topic.  They are all embedded within the writing in one book.  Some of the readers the series provide have these structures, but I’m saving them.  More on that later.  So what’s a girl to do?  Use what you have!  And what we have are the National Geographic readers that come with the science series our district offers.  I have gone through and found parts of the first three texts that represent each type of text structure.  From that, I will build our “you do” portion of the lessons.  We will still use Plagues, Pox, and Pestilence, but now it will be portions of it instead of the whole text.  (It’s a fun way to introduce some of the various sicknesses that kids come across in books.  They approach it in a way that is easy to understand and is nonthreatening.)

With that being said, we now have a “Teacher does”, a “you do together”, and now comes the big reveal-a “you do independently”.  Here’s the first thing I’ve done.

  

In these two crates are single copies of informational books I’ve gathered over the years and from our current reading series.  These books will be used on a weekly basis.  Students will pick a book, on any of the topics presented, and complete an informational text assignment.  The generic questions are intense enough to make them think through the process, but provide for a different experience each time they read a new book!  I’m kinda excited about this.  Below are samples of how the pages look and work! 

Find them here!

         Along with this, I am working on some pages to accompany the lessons we will teach on text structure.  Once we try them out and they work, I’ll get them posted!  It will give me some great things to write about!  For now, I’m off to think about all the things I have to do in the next day and a half before open house!  The list is long, it always is!