Chapter 15: Informational Reading

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Chapter 15 Informational Reading

• Teaching Reading Sourcebook 2nd edition

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Informational Text

• Informational or expository text tends tobe more
  complex, diverse, and challenging than narrative
  text.
• It is important to integrate expository texts in
  language arts instruction and integrate
  comprehension into content-area teaching.
• Types of informational texts include
• instructions, brochures, catalogues
• directions, recipes, manuals, signs
• magazine and news articles, websites, textbooks

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Informational Text Structure

• Informational text structures include
• Description explains or defines topic or concept
• Compare-Contrast presents similarities and
  differences
• Cause-Effect presents reasons an event happened
  and its results
• Problem/Solution poses a problem and suggests
  possible solutions
• Time Order (Sequence) groups ideas by order or
  time

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Graphic Organizers

• Concrete representations of informational text
  structure provide students a means to
• record information about underlying text
  structure
• see how concepts fit within the structures
• focus on the most important ideas
• examine relationships among concepts
• recall key text information
• write well-organized summaries.

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Considerate Texts

• Three overlapping features characterize and help
  to define considerate texts.
• Structural cues introductions, summaries,
  titles, headings, charts, tables, type font,
  bullets etc.
• Coherence clarity of writing in explicitly
  stated main ideas, information supports
  development of main idea, logical order of events
  and ideas, use of signal words, precise
  language, smooth transitions
• Audience appropriateness conceptual density or
  the number of new concepts introduced

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Strategy Application

• Recognizing informational text structure can be
  developed through
• detecting signal words
• noting graphic features (e.g. headings, tables,
  etc.)
• creating graphic organizers to lay out or
  organize information.
• Monitoring comprehension when reading to learn
  new information requires metacognitive awareness
• knowledge about ourselves as learners
• knowledge of the tasks we face
• knowledge of the strategies we use

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Strategy Application

• Connecting to World Knowledge
• Students learn new information by connecting it
  to knowledge from their prior experience.
• Readers world knowledge shapes the way they
  perceive information in text.
• The K-W-L procedure can be used to tap prior
  knowledge.
• K- assessing what students know
• W- assessing what students want to learn
• L- noting what students have learned from the
  text

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Strategy Application

• Predicting
• Students make predictions about informational
  text by scanning structural cues that indicate
  its organization.
• Students make predictions about the purpose of
  the text as a whole, as well as the functions of
  various parts of the text.
• Previewing the text in this way organizes
  students thinking, preparing them to learn new
  information presented in the text.

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Strategy Application

• Asking Questions
• Students need instruction in how to ask
  higher-level questions to help them learn from
  informational text.
• In the strategy elaborative interrogation,
  students ask why a fact makes sense, which helps
  them explain or expand text information and
  better remember it.
• Answering Questions
• The QAR framework is a type of question-answering
  instruction that focuses on a three-way
  relationship among question types 1.Right There
  2.Think and Search 3. On My Own 4. Author and Me.

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Strategy Application

• Constructing Mental Images
• Readers can create pictures in their minds, which
  depict the content of the text.
• Think aloud models help students to learn the
  thinking processes needed to visualize.
• Summarizing strategies
• Paragraph shrinking identify main ideas shrink
  it into one sentence 10 words or less
• Collaborative Strategic Reading substitute a
  more general term for a list of terms delete
  redundant information delete information that is
  not central to overall meaning select or create
  a topic sentence

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Reader Response

• Even when reading informational text, students
  use their existing knowledge to respond to the
  authors point of view and bias.
• Discussion-Oriented Instruction such as
  Questioning the Author (QtA) teaches students to
  question what they read, to think, to probe, to
  associate, and to critique.
• Writing for Content-Area Learning provides
  opportunities for response to informational text
  by writing reviews of texts, making improvements
  to texts, and creating their own informational
  texts.

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Motivation and Engagement

• Engaged Readers
• are motivated
• are knowledge driven
• are socially interactive
• believe in their reading skills
• persist in the face of difficulty
• possess a variety of cognitive comprehension
  strategies.

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Web-Based Text

• The benefits of Web-based text
• Readers can follow links to definitions,
  background, and more detailed explanations to
  support comprehension.
• Readers learn more easily from Web-based than
  printed text as long as options for navigation
  and browsing are limited.
• Electronic text can be more motivating especially
  for struggling readers.
• Reading on the Web requires additional demands on
  the reader in specialized strategy application.

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When to Teach

• Primary grade students need increased
  instructional time with informational text.
• Young children often prefer age-appropriate
  informational text, which builds world knowledge.
  
• After grade 3, reading content-area texts becomes
  increasingly important to expand their knowledge.
• It is critical to balance and integrate explicit
  comprehension strategies instruction with
  emphasis on the content of the text.

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When to Assess and Intervene

• It is necessary to assess comprehension processes
  as well as outcomes
• When assessment reveals that students are
  misusing or not using a specific strategy,
  additional instructional support is required
• Comprehension Assessment Response Formats include
• cloze maze CBM
• open ended/ multiple choice questions
• retelling
• think aloud protocol