What, Why & How: Easy Steps for Teaching Text Structure in a Powerful Way (Part 1)
Posted on March 17, 2025Share This Content
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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
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
During conferences, while I do listen to what students are saying, I also listen for what they are NOT saying. This is why. Frequently when you ask a student to tell you what they have learned from a complex informational source (or a part of a source), they will talk about content they understood without …Read more
“Why can’t I just highlight? Why do I have to annotate?” Ever heard this from a student? I don’t have to convince you of the value of annotating, but we do need to remind (and even convince) students that annotating a source can help us monitor for meaning. HERE’S THE WHY! Annotating can help us …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.” Introduce the Mnemonic P.R.I.D.E. to identify author’s purpose more precisely I’m not a big fan …Read more
“Who will you tell?” This is a conversation I’ve started having with students at the guided reading table before they write in response to an informational source. I usually start by saying something like the following: When you go home tonight and your mom asks about school, you could just say, “It was okay” OR …Read more
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.