What, Why & How: A Sample Text Structure Lesson (Part 3)
Posted on April 7, 2025Share This Content
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Ever hunt for the perfect texts to teach “text structure” and end up just banging your head against the wall? It’s because texts are more complex than five simple structures, right? In this blog entry I describe an analogy I’ve started using with students to move us beyond this problem.
Identifying a text’s structure(s) can play a powerful role in comprehension. Knowing the five types of structures is not enough, though. Over several lessons and across time, we have to continually weave in discussions about the what, the why, the how. In part 1 of this series, I share the tools for teaching students to identify a text’s structure in a way that leads to understanding the main ideas in a source.
Preparation Select a text that has strong supporting/extending features – graphs, maps, photos and captions, etc. Locate 3-4 features that you can focus on during the Phase 2 part of the lesson. If you’re unsure whether the features are strong, think about how you might answer the questions posed in steps 1-3 on the ANCHOR …Read more
Teaching our students how to make sense of informational sources can feel overwhelming. With a systematic plan for teaching and learning, we can make this easier for ourselves and our students. Visit this updated post for the latest version of the three-phase plan – Meet the Source, Meet the Strategies, Meet the Response.
Are your students citing “text evidence” without really having control of the meaning of that evidence? Do they forget to explain further or elaborate? If either of these is the case for your students, they may need to space to contemplate what one detail or quote from the text means. A simple way to do …Read more
Noticing an author’s purpose helps us 1) determine what’s important in a source, 2) begin to think critically about the information in a source, and 3) remember what we read. What follows are a few recommendations for teaching “author’s purpose.” Integrate WHY into your discussions of author’s purpose The WHY of noticing an author’s purpose …Read more
If your students struggle with determining what’s important or they think “it’s all important!” make sure they have a clear purpose for reading. A purpose stated as a question is even better. Questions like “What is the author’s point of view? What are details in the sources that make me think so?” or “How did …Read more
In Part 3 of this series, I describe a three-phase lesson I gave on identifying text structures. I share lots instructional artifact photos!