How To Use Informational Text In Your Classroom

Whether you are reading this at the beginning or end of your work day, take a moment and do a mental "reading list" inventory.  What works of fiction are you currently reading?  During the day, how many news articles, websites, journal articles, non-fiction books, emails, documents, directions, graphs, charts, maps and diagrams will you be looking at to gather information?  What kind of writing and talking will you do? Will any of it require you to go back into the "informational text" materials to find information to support what you are writing or talking about?  I suspect that many of you spend a great deal of your professional and personal time focusing more on the "informational" side of text then the "literary" side of text - maybe by choice, maybe by necessity.  I know I carry my Kindle around just to grab a few minutes of "story time" for myself during the day.   Students in grades k-12 also need to experience a blend of literary and informational text, in many forms and across all subject areas, to help them access knowledge and ideas they will need to be successful in life.

Ohio's New Learning Standards for ELA/Literacy, drawing from the Common Core ELA Standards for Literacy, include the use of informational text in all grades and content areas as a way for students to gather and build knowledge.  Another way of looking at this it to consider yourself a teacher of the language of your content area.  What skills do students need to be able to read and write like a scientist, a historian or an artist? What strategies might you help them learn to access features of informational text - like charts, infographics, maps, diagrams, tags, interactive data tables?  One of our Bay Village Schools District-Wide Goals focuses on the use of Informational Text across our district. To help you with your understanding of this goal, and to begin to share instructional strategies that will help your students access the "language" of your content area, I have compiled some resources for you.

Define  Informational Text:
What informational text will students be able to use to build knowledge in your classroom?  How will you provide access to a variety of informational text?  What strategies might you help your students learn?

• Using Close Reading skills 
• Understanding content vocabulary in context
• Using a variety of rich, complex text

What might this look like in a classroom?
Mr. Hossak's 5th grade Classroom (EngageNY)
Exemplar Lesson Plans - scroll down to see Informational Text (achievethecore.org)

Guiding Questions For Instruction Using Informational Text.  (based on achievethecore.org - Instructional Practice Guides)

• How does the unit allow students to persist in efforts to seek evidence for their responses by returning to the info text when discussing or collaborating?
• What opportunities are provided for students to build on each other's observations or insights around a piece of informational text - including charts, maps, primary docs etc.?
• What tools/strategies will students be able to use to help them gain content knowledge from informational text?
• How are questions and tasks designed to help students build academic vocabulary (content or domain specific vocabulary and syntax)?
• How are questions and tasks designed to require students to use details from the text to demonstrate understanding and support their ideas about the text?
• What factors have been considered to make sure the text used is at or above the complexity expected for the grade level?

Resources
STANDARDS

• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Reading Informational Text k-5 
• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Reading Informational Text 6-12
• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Social Studies Literacy gr 6-12
• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Science and Technical Subj. gr 6-12
• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Content Area Writing - Gr 6-12
• Ohio's New Learning Standards - Writing gr k-5

ARTICLES

• Engage NY - NY Dept of Ed - Selecting Authentic Texts Resource Page
• ASCD Article - The Case for Informational Text (Neil Duke. EdLeadership. March 2004)
• ASCD Article - Closing In On Close Reading (Nancy Boyles. EdLeadership. Dec 2012)
• University of North Carolina Teacher Resources - Reading Info Text k-5
• Informational Text Resource Toolkit - INFOhio
• Building World Knowledge - Getting Children To Read and Enjoy Info Text - Reading Rockets
• Literacy Implementation Guidance for ELA/Literacy Standards - International Reading Association
• Reading Skills - An Introduction to Visual Literacy ( University of North Carolina)
• The Fine Arts 21st Century Skills Map  ( National Art Education Association)

INSTRUCTIONAL PLANNING

• Reading Like A Historian - Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) 
• What's In A Graph? Science NetLinks
• Writing Technical Instructions - ReadWriteThink
• ASCD Book Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction - C2 Reading In the Mathematics Classroom (Diane Metsisto)
• Guide For Writing Text Based Questions - achievethecore.org
• k-8 Lexiled Reading Passages - informational text  readworks.org
• Text Rater website - need to cut/paste in a text sample to assess complexity
• Reading Through the Arts - Kennedy Center ArtsEdge
• Pennsylvania Dept of Education - Phys Ed and Literacy Resource Page
• Think Literacy - Cross Curricular Ideas for Phys Ed developed by Calif. Dept of Ed
• Exemplars of Close Reading - Achievethecore.org gr 3-12
• Exemplar Units For Close Reading - EngageNY gr 6-12

ADDITIONAL BLOG POSTS

• Char's Blog Post on Finding A Balance Between Fiction and Non-Fiction - with lots of Reading and Vocabulary Strategies.
• Char's Blog Post on How To Teacher Readers To Read For A Purpose - with lots of Close Reading Strategy links

Is There Room For Poetry In A Informational Text World?

I become liquid

Conforming to any shape

I flow, I shift, change.

C.S.

April is National Poetry Month. I challenge all of you to tie poetry into one lesson this month. One lesson. What, you say, you are not an ELA teacher? That's ok. Poetry is about taking content knowledge and interpreting it in a new way that someone hasn't thought of before. Take a look at my Haiku, is it about liquid as one of the 3 states of matter - science content OR is it about how I feel about what is being expected of teachers as they transition to the Common Core? Poetry is a way to condense key ideas, vocabulary, concepts down into something that is approachable or memorable. Poetry can be very structured and mathematically precise or it can wander and roam across a page mapping out thoughts and ideas. Poetry can be a bridge between fiction and non-fiction. Poetry requires the readers to really work at understanding the meaning of the poem - looking closely at what words the poet chose to create an impression or provoke an emotion.


But wait, the Common Core focus is very much on reading Informational Text and not poetry. Do the writers of the Common Core really expect the math department or the history department to teach reading? No, not directly. The writers do expect that all teachers will take responsibility for ensuring that students in their classrooms have the background knowledge experiences they will need to be successful readers of a wide variety of materials as they become adults. Don't you as teachers already teach them how to be thinkers? Stretch that thinking just a bit and you will realize that in order to be thinkers in your classroom, students must be able to read primary source information and draw their own conclusions. Readers need to spend time deciding what the author of a primary source document was trying to accomplish with the writing. What information did they choose to include or not include? What impression or emotion were they trying to elicit? What was going on in society at the time the piece was written? This is a shift away from the traditional textbook based content area reading assignment where the student reads p16-23, taking notes on bold faced words and answering the questions at the end of the section. It will require department and grade level teams to spend time reading the primary source material they will be using in their classrooms and having their own discussions. Lunch room conversations could become a lot more interesting!  


Are you up to this challenge... can you figure out how to add a little poetry to your classroom? And more importantly, can you help students to unlock the meaning of primary source materials that are relevant to your class?

Resources

Teaching Informational Text

• EngageNY  ELA Shift 2 Video (New York Dept of Ed) Informational Text, Knowledge in the Disciplines
• Appendix B - Common Core Curriculum ELA Exemplar Texts and Performance Tasks
• Teaching With Documents Lesson Plans - National Archives
• Teaching With Primary Sources - The Library of Congress
• Switching Gears - Helping Students Move Successfully From Reading Literature to Reading in the Content Area - Steve Peha (Teaching That Makes Sense)
• Simple Poems, Powerful Teaching: Experiencing Poetry in Content -Area Classrooms by Allison Baer (2007 Adlit InPerspective Magazine Ohio Resource Center)

Poetry Websites

• Ohio Resource Center - National Poetry Month Website
• British Poetry from Old English to the Modern Day  searchable by author view, first line view, timeline view, keyword view. Includes a section of literary criticism of poetry.
• The Academy for American Poets homepage  find text of poems along with a wide variety of lesson resources
• Poetry for Teens - poems about topics relevant to teenagers
• Popular Poems for teaching poetry
• World Poetry Sites  part of the National Poetry Month Initiative
• Poetry Foundation

Poetry Lesson

• Poems for Democracy
• Lessons to Teach the Power of Poetry
• In the Poet's Shoes