“Building” analogy to teach “text structure”
Posted on January 10, 2016Share This Content
teaching informational text writing
Easier Main Ideas – Think Traits of Historical Figures
Posted on March 13, 2015I’ve been thinking about how we can help students identifying multiple main/central ideas in a text. Traditionally we’ve focused on identifying one main idea, but beginning in 5th grade (and continuing in 6th and 7th), the Common Core Standards for Reading Informational Texts expect students to be able to “determine two or more main ideas …Read more
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Tip #3 for Locating Paired Informational Texts – By Same Author
Posted on May 28, 2014What do you notice regarding the similarities in the types of details included in these sentences from two different books by Seymour Simon? Your backbone, or spine, is a flexible column of bones that runs down the middle of your body. It is made up of a chain of thirty-three small bones called vertebrae, which …Read more
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Reading & Writing Procedure Texts in Primary Grades, Part II
Posted on January 11, 2013Earlier I blogged about mentor texts for procedure writing with primary grade students. Once you launch your unit with mentor texts, jump into shared writing of procedure texts with your students, co-creating models of procedure writing and related anchor charts with reminders for writing these texts. You might start with a “how-to” demonstration so the …Read more
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How many of us hunt for the perfect texts to teach “text structure” and end up just banging our heads against the wall? It’s because texts are more complex than five simple structures. Below I describe an analogy I’ve started using with students to get beyond this problem. A building has a purpose (to be …Read more