Chapter 9- Promoting Comprehension: Text Factors

Vocaublary:

Genres: Categories of literature. Usually stories, informational, or poetry. Subgenres fall into those 3 categories. 

Text Structure: Used to organize text and emphasize most important ideas. 

Text Features: Used to achieve particular effect in writing. Symbolism, tone, headings, indexes, page layout, etc. 

Narrative Genres: Below

• Folklore: Includes fables; point out morals, folktales; heroes triumph adversity, myths; created by ancient peoples to explain natural phenomena, and legends; includes hero tales and tall tales, recounts deeds of courageous people
• Fantasy: Includes Modern literary tales; written by modern authors (similar to folktales),fantastic stories; imaginative, science fiction; explores scientific possibilities, and high fantasy; focuses on conflict between good and evil
• Realistic Fiction: Includes Contemporary stories; portray today’s society, historical stories; realistic stories set in the past

Elements of Story Structure: Plot, characters, setting, point of view, and theme

• Plot: sequence of events that involves characters in conflict situations. Characters put events into motion. Conflict: Between character and nature, character and society, character and character, or within a character. Beginning, middle, end progression
• Characters: People or personified animals. Character development includes appearance; body shape, facial features, dressing habits, mannerisms, etc, Action;, Dialogue; puts life and personality into characters, Monologue; reveals characters thoughts
• Setting: Location; where, when, etc., Weather; can be crucial to some stories, Time Period; past or future, Time; includes both time of day and time that passes throughout story
• Point of View: First Person; through the eyes of one character, Omniscient; author tells information and process of each character, Limited Omniscient; readers know thoughts of one character, told in 3rd person, Objective; readers are eyewitnesses. Can only know what is visible and audible. No character thought is present.
• Theme: underlying meaning of a story. Either explicit; clear, or Implicit; must be inferred

Narrative Devices: Used to make writing more vivid and memorable. 

Text Factors of Non-Fiction: Below

• Non-fiction genres: Alphabet books, biographies, reference books
• Expository Text Structures: Description; Author describes topic by listing characters, features, and examples, Sequence; numerical or chronological order, Comparison; Comparing 2 or more things, Cause and Effect; explains one or more causes and the resulting effect, Problem and Solution; states a problem and offers 1 or more solutions
• Nonfiction Features: headings and subheadings to direct attention of reader, photos and drawings to show big ideas, figures to provide detailed info, margin notes, highlighted vocabulary, glossary, review sections, index

Text Factors of Poetry: Below

• Formats: Picture book, specialized collections, comprehensive anthologies, Verse novels
• Poetic Forms: Acrostics; choose a word, write it vertically, create lines of poetry describing the words, Apology Poems; apologizing for something they are secretly proud of doing, Bilingual Poems; free verse poems, Color Poems; Each line begins with a poem, Concrete Poems; words and lines of the poem are arranged to convey the meaning, Found Poems; Uses clippings from newspapers and magazines, Haiku; poem contains only 17 syllables, Odes; celebrate everyday objects, Poems for Two Voices; two poems written side by side for 2 readers to read simultaneously
• Poetic Devices: Assonance, Consonance, Imagery, Metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Repetition, Rhyme, Rhythm, Simile

Assessing Knowledge of Text Factors: Instruction Assessment Cycle below

• Step 1: Planning- determining which text factors they’ll teach and how they’ll monitor students and assess learning
• Step 2: Monitoring- Teacher monitors progress as they observe and conference with them about reading and writing activities. Also takes notes of students understanding of text structures 
• Step 3: Evaluating- Teacher encourages their students to apply knowledge of genres, structure elements, and literary devices as they respond to literature. Rubrics are often used in this step
• Step 4: Reflecting- Teacher keeps in close contact with students and their thoughts on how they feel they are progressing with the ability to use text factors.
• The Grasshopper and the Ants: This video clearly focuses on vocabulary by scrolling each vocabulary word across the screen so that students can see and hear the word. This story is a fable.

Myths, Fables, and Folktales: This video gives a clear definition for myths, fables, and folktales. A myth is a short story that explains why something is the way it is. A myth usually includes gods or goddesses, they teach a lesson, usually include magic, and come from different cultures. A fable is a short story used to teach a moral or lesson, often with animals as the main characters. Lastly, a folktale is a short that has been told orally from generation to generation.

Fiction Book Genres- What is Fantasy: This video explains what exactly genres are. It also explains what Fantasy is. Fantasy, according to the video, contains unreal things that could never be real in our world. It also breaks the rules of what we already know. 

Fiction Book Genres- What is Science Fiction: This video comes from the same series as the “What is Fantasy” video. Science fiction includes time travel, monsters, aliens, etc. Science Fiction stories come from the author’s imagination. Science Fiction includes things that aren’t real but could possibly be real. 

Realistic Fiction: This video does a great job of breaking down what realistic fiction is. Realistic fiction is stories that could actually happen in our world, therefore they are realistic. 

Nonfiction Text Features: This video explains what text features are and how they can be used. Examples of text features are titles, subtitles, table of contents, charts, graphs, tables, captions, etc. 

Storytime with Berly: This is a book read aloud. This is a great option to use in the classroom when students are learning to read and identify text features. 

Classroom Connection: This chapter is really useful for learning and reviewing the features of text, genres, and other types of text. This will be a great chapter to look back to when I am preparing for the FORT.