Making It Real: Teaching Informational Texts in 21 st Century Classrooms

Dr. Barbara Moss [email protected]

California Reading Association Vacaville, CA November 4, 2011 1

To Think About…

With your partner, make a list of every thing you have read during the past 24 hour period. 2

What is Informational Text?

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What is Informational Text?

 Newspapers  Magazines  Encyclopedias  Digital information  Information trade books  Almanacs  Textbooks 4

Why Use Informational Texts?

 By sixth grade, 80% of school reading tasks are expository (Venezky, 2007)  Need to close the “knowledge gap” (Hirsch, 2006)  80% of adult/workplace reading is informational  Can motivate reading  Standardized tests are 85% expository (Daniels, 2007) 5

“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  Greater focus on academic vocabulary(Tier 2 words); less on literary terms  Grades 6-12- broad base of content literacy  Increased text complexity  Writing focused on argument, not personal narratives  Focus on text dependent questions 8

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 K 5, 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 9

Teaching Content is Teaching Reading…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc 10

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 11

Three Informational Text Gaps….



The Achievement Gap



The Exposure Gap



The Instruction Gap

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The Achievement Gap: Test Scores

 4 th 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) 14

Thinking about genres…

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CCSS Informational Text Categories

 Literary Nonfiction  Exposition  Argument/Persuasion  Procedural 20

Literary Nonfiction

 Combines factual elements with information  Uses literary devices as well as informational text structures  Focus on text structures 21

Exposition

 Straightforward information  Academic vocabulary is crucial to meaning  Textbook like 22

Argument/Persuasion

 Texts that use arguments and evidence to convince the reader of their position 23

Procedural Texts/Documents

 Step by step texts that describe how to complete a task  Technical documents 24

Distribution of Text Types on NAEP/Common Core Standards

Grade 4 8 12 Literary 50% 45% 30% Information 50% 55% 70% 25

Basal Informational Selections by Type (Moss, 2008)

Genre Lit NF Expos Arg/Pers.

Proc/Doc Series HM SRA HM SRA HM SRA HM SRA Pri 31% 29% 52% 63% 0% 0% 17% 8% Int 23% 61% 63% 37% 4% 3% 11% 0% 26

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 27

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) 28

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 29

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 30

Gradual Release of Responsibility

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CCSS: Sample Tasks

 Describe the overall structure events ideas, concepts or information in a text.

of  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 33

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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 35

Expository Retellings Recounting 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 36 36

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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) 38

gray brown Appearance Head- chest Their bodies abdomen unlike insects black wasps toads frogs Spiders Enemies trapdoor widow tarantula Types of spiders water sheet orb Types of webs triangle How they reproduce tangled funnel Lay eggs in a silk sac Spiderlings Care for selves Ballooning 39

Strategy Framed Writing:

Winterizing a Car

First get everything you need. You will need oil, antifreeze, oil filter, and hoses. new oil and the new oil filter. needs filled. Next, Second, Thirdly lift up the hood and screw off the oil filter. Put in check the antifreeze adding antifreeze to the radiator if it 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 43

Now…evaluate yourself!!

Where are you as a teacher of informational texts???

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