Macy Bombard
Informational Text: Conveys factual information meant to increase an individual’s knowledge of subject matter. (textbooks, how-to books, manuals, newspaper, magazines, reports, summaries, online sources, books about science, history, social studies, and the arts). Textbooks are the most common source of informational text in classrooms with internet sources as a close second.
Academic Language: Words that are not typically used in everyday conversations. Vocab that relates to academic content. Tier 2 words; used across subject areas (alternate, represent, temporary, frequent). Tier 3 words; content specific words that are critical to understanding new concepts from informational text (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division).Academic language is often bolded or italicized.
Readability: Help estimate difficulty of any text. Not intended to be very precise. Most common formula involves a measure of sentence length and word length to tell of the grade level score. Score is meant to indicate reading achievement level students would need to be at to understand the text. (Fry reliability graph, flesch-Kincaid, Sate Chall, Spache).
Informational Text Circles: In small groups, students are assigned a section to read. Each student assumes a role and is then responsible for reporting about their role to the rest of the group after the given amount of time. After reading, each student will report what they learned and may touch on some academic language they came across. To ensure that each group member is participating, a rubric may be incorporated.
Jigsaw: Students assume roles as they read and share their understanding of the content in small groups. Similar to lit circles but organized differently. Each group is made up of 3-5 members. Each student is given a copy of the same text. The first groups the students are in are “home groups”. While reading the text in the home groups, each student becomes an expert on their assumed role. After the reading, each expert meets with the other experts from the other home groups who shared their same role. These are “expert groups”. After the expert groups meet, students meet back with their home groups to share and teach the group about their topic.
Idea Sketches: Graphic organizers students complete in small groups as they read the text. Purpose is for students to read a section of the text and focus on the main ideas and supporting details, adding information to the organizers as they read.
- Introduce overall topic understudy, activate background knowledge through discussion. Notice the organization of the text by finding the main idea and subtopics.
- Chunk text by splitting into sections. Topic headings or subtopics are good dividers to go by.
- Divide class into small groups or pairs. Assign chunks they will read.
- Instruct groups to put the topic assigned into the center of a poster board piece and circle it. This is the beginning of the group’s sketch. Model how to make an organizer by sketching boxes, triangles, diamonds, and other shapes to add information into.
- Each group reads their chunk silently or aloud. Together students sketch information into the organizer that best represents the information they read. During this time, the teacher circles and checks in with each group.
- Display poster boards in chronological order. Add clarifying information with sticky notes
Trade Books: Literature and informational books widely available in books stores . Used by teachers, to supplement textbooks or replace.
Text Set: Group of trade books that have a common theme
Narrative Informational Text: Author will typically tell a fictional story to convey factual information.
Expository Informational Books: Don’t contain stories. They contain information that typically follows specific text structures such as description, sequence, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and problem solving. May also contain a table of contents, glossary, illustrations, charts, graphs. These books do not need to be read in a specific order.
Mixed Informational Books: Narrate stories and include factual information in surrounding text. Surrounding the story are true facts and illustrations. It is important to help students distinguish facts from fiction with this type of book.
Idea Circles: Small peer-led group discussions. Discussions focus on concepts in multiple text sources. Groups are made up of 3-6 students. Each student reads different informational text, bringing unique information to the idea group. During discussion, each student talks about what they read about the concept and the students compare their findings.
Macy Bombard- ENGED Blog 