Making It Real: Teaching
Informational Texts in 21st
Century Classrooms
Dr. Barbara Moss
bmoss@mail.sdsu.edu
California Reading Association
Vacaville, CA
November 4, 2011
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To Think About…
With your partner, make a list of everything you have read during the past 24
hour period.
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What is Informational Text?
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What is Informational Text?
Newspapers
Magazines
Encyclopedias
Digital information
Information trade
books
Almanacs
Textbooks
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Why Use Informational
Texts?
 By sixth grade, 80% of
school reading tasks
are expository
(Venezky, 2007)
 80% of adult/workplace
reading is informational
Need to close the
“knowledge gap”
(Hirsch, 2006)
Can motivate
reading
 Standardized tests are
85% expository
(Daniels, 2007)
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“Students’ success or failure in school (and out
of school!) is closely tied to their ability to
comprehend expository text” (Kamil, 2003).
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Why does it matter more
than ever?
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Six Shifts in the Common Core
(CCSS) ELA Standards
 50% informational text
in K-5 to build
background knowledge
across levels
 Grades 6-12- broad
base of content literacy
 Increased text
complexity
 Focus on textdependent questions
 Greater focus on
academic
vocabulary(Tier 2
words); less on literary
terms
 Writing focused on
argument, not personal
narratives
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CCSS: Informational Text
We in America in K-5 focus 80% of our
time on stories…that is what is tested
on exams and in our textbooks..yet in K5, the general knowledge you develop
plays a crucial role in your performance
in other disciplines and your ability to
read more complex texts. So the CCSS
demand that 50% of the texts students
read in K-5 is informational, primarily
about science and history, the arts…the
texts through which students learn
about the world.
David Coleman, CCSS
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Teaching Content is Teaching
Reading…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc
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CCSS Anchor Standards K-5
 Key ideas and details
details and inference
relationships between events
 Craft and structure
vocabulary
text features
macrostructure/comparing
 Integration of knowledge and ideas
visuals
reason and evidence
integrate information multiple sources
 Text complexity
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Three Informational Text
Gaps….
The Achievement Gap
The Exposure Gap
The Instruction Gap
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The Achievement Gap:
Test Scores
 4th Grade slump (Chall,
Jacobs, and Baldwin,
1990)
 Scores on 2009 NAEP
informational text for
English learners far lower
than for native speakers
(190 vs. 219) (National
Center for Education
Statistics, 2009).
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The Exposure Gap
 First graders spent 3.6 minutes a day
with informational texts (Duke, 2000)
 Students need exposure to a range of
informational texts, not just biography
(Dreher & Voelker, 2004)
 Many California students get little or
no social studies or science instruction
(Wineburg, 2006)
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Thinking about genres…
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CCSS Informational Text
Categories
Literary Nonfiction
Exposition
Argument/Persuasion
Procedural
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Literary Nonfiction
Combines factual
elements with
information
Uses literary
devices as well as
informational text
structures
Focus on text
structures
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Exposition
Straightforward
information
Academic vocabulary is
crucial to meaning
Textbook like
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Argument/Persuasion
Texts that use arguments
and evidence to convince
the reader of their
position
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Procedural Texts/Documents
Step by step texts that
describe how to complete
a task
Technical documents
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Distribution of Text Types on
NAEP/Common Core Standards
Grade
Literary
Information
4
50%
50%
8
45%
55%
12
30%
70%
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Basal Informational Selections
by Type (Moss, 2008)
Genre
Series
Pri
Int
Lit NF
HM
31%
23%
SRA
29%
61%
HM
52%
63%
SRA
63%
37%
HM
0%
4%
SRA
0%
3%
HM
17%
11%
SRA
8%
0%
Expos
Arg/Pers.
Proc/Doc
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CCSS Emphasis on Complex Texts
 Non-required exemplar texts are challenging (see
Appendix B)
 Recommend a staircase of increasing text
complexity year by year
 Texts need to be more complex for students to be
college and career ready
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The Instruction Gap
Research continues to confirm
lack of comprehension
instruction of any type in K-6;
especially informational text
(Durkin, 1979; Taylor, Pearson,
Clark & Walpole, 2000)
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CCSS: Text-Based Instruction
Need close reading, not just
skimming and scanning for facts
Too much time building
background, not enough close
reading
Emphasis on argument/evidence
Read, reread more difficult
shorter texts
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How Should Instruction Change?
 Make time for
informational texts
More attention to text
macrostructures
 Content integrated
thematic units
Get beyond just teaching
text features and one genre
of informational text
(biographies!!!)
 Tiered texts of
increased
complexity
 Deeper teaching of
comprehension
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Gradual Release of Responsibility
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CCSS: Sample Tasks
 Describe the overall structure of
events ideas, concepts or
information in a text.
 Recount key details in a text.
 Compare and contrast a firsthand
account of a topic with a
secondhand account, attending to
the focus of each account and the
information provided by each.
 Students evaluate an argument
and challenge it using evidence.
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Table of Contents Prediction
Present a book cover
Students predict table of
contents by chapter
Gets students thinking about
text macrostructure, sequence
of presentation of information
Promotes reflection on big
ideas of text
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Table of Contents
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A Deadly Storm
The Hurricane Begins to Develop
Preparing for the Hurricane
Waiting for the Storm
Mitch Hits?
Swept Away!
Recovery
Glossary
Index
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Expository RetellingsRecounting Details
•
•
•
•
Retellings are familiar to teacher through DRA
Should be used with exposition, not just narrative
Help kids internalize text structures
Requires them to “read, reread, and read again” or
listen intently
• Develop oral language abilities
• Show teachers how students organize information
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Teach Text Structures:
Webs or Charts
 Help children segment text
 Keep track of information
 See how text is organized
(description, cause effect,
comparison contrast, problem
solution)
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gray
brown
black
wasps toads frogs
Enemies
Appearance
trapdoor
widow
tarantula
Head- chest
Their bodies
Types of spiders
water
sheet
Spiders
abdomen
unlike insects
How they reproduce
orb
Types of webs
tangled
Spiderlings
Lay eggs
in a silk
sac
Care for selves
Ballooning
triangle
funnel
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Strategy Framed Writing:
Winterizing a Car
First get everything you need. You will need
oil, antifreeze, oil filter, and hoses. Second, lift
up the hood and screw off the oil filter. Put in
new oil and the new oil filter. Thirdly check the
antifreeze adding antifreeze to the radiator if it
needs filled. Next, put water in the battery.
Close the hood. Finally, check the gas to make
sure you have enough before taking off.
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The Great Depression in California
The '30s produced both shantytowns full of displaced
Okies and the soaring beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Charles Dickens had it right: It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times.
The '30s really began in 1929 with a crash and ended in
1941 with a war. Oct. 29, 1929, was the day the stock
market crashed -- but it was more than just a Wall Street
problem. The bottom dropped out of the economy almost
at once.
The unemployment rate, only 3 percent in 1925, was
25 percent in 1933. Some 9,000 banks failed across the
United States, farm prices dropped by half, and the stock
market lost 80 percent of its value between 1930 and
1933. Thousands of people lost their homes to the
banks. Millions of people were out of work, and some
were near starvation. Franklin Roosevelt created a
variety of programs, including the California
Conservation Corps, and the Works Progress
Administration to give people jobs.
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Victorville, CA
January 17, 1933
Dear Grace
Bless your heart how did you know how bad we needed the ten
dollars. So bad we didn’t have a cent. We have lost everything we
have. Our little home will be sold the first of April and we have
moved up in the mountains 116 miles from Lynwood. I could not
bear to stay there and see our life savings taken from us. We would
have been all right if the boys could have work. We are living on a
ranch. We don’t have to pay any rent and have plenty of water from
the mountain just back of the shack we live in. We have no gas or
water bills to pay but we have electric so we have the radio to listen
to. We have enough to eat so far. The Red Cross gives us flour and
we have chickens. Hope you can come visit us. Aunt Jane.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
nrxmpihCjqw
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Now…evaluate yourself!!
Where are you as a teacher of
informational texts???
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