week 11 assignment 3

Over the past six years reading comprehension has changed its focus from mastery of skills to learning strategies which are adaptable, flexible and in control of the reader. One of the most important ways when training students to understand what they read, is for them to be aware of the different types of texts, how to read them and what type of information does that text provide. When students know what they are looking for in the text they come into reading with a plan of how to understand the information and how the information will be laid out. Research shows the children's reading comprehension is higher when they know the text structural development and can use them properly. For the above reasons we teach our students the different types of texts and how to read and analyze them.

Text features give students information to help them understand what they will read.  The heading of the story provides and introduces the students to specific pieces of information that they will need for the text, so that the student can process and connect that information when reading the passage. Without a heading it may be a challenge for a student to understand what they read.

 Since there are many types of expository texts and they vary a lot, it's important to introduce your students to various text throughout the school year, and to model how to understand each of them in the beginning of the year.

There are five basic types of texts, they are, Description, sequence, compare or contrast, cause or effect, problem or solution. When a student can identify the text they can comprehend it more easily and they will be able to retain it for longer.  

When teaching expository text structure it is important to follow these three steps.

1.     The teacher should show her students the signal words and phrases that indicate what type of text it will be. The teacher also gives and shows her students the graphic organizers for that text.

2.     The teacher gives her students opportunities to work on texts (books not story's). The students will apply what they learned about signal words and phrases in the text to identify each text better and they may also use a graphic organizer to illustrate these patterns.

3.     The students will write paragraphs using each type of text structure pattern. The first activity should be done with the whole class followed by working in small groups or partners and then once this is done in several sessions the teacher gives her students independent writing activities. The student will write a rough draft using signal words and phrases to indicate what type of text it is and then revise and edit the writing.

The most important thing for you as a teacher when teaching types of text to your students is for her to be well-informed about the different types of text structures for expository texts, the signal words and phrases for each text structure, and the appropriate graphic organizer for each text.

Before you begin to teach your class, you must model the procedures.

Here are some important rules when teaching your class how to identify and analyze the different types of texts.

       Teach text structures in order listed above, from description through compare and contrast.

       Teach one text structure in each lesson, introduce and work on it or a few sessions before proceeding to the next.

       Work on short texts when practicing by the sessions. Since texts are short, you can work on a few each session.

       Emphasize and highlight signal words and phrases and make sure your students know that authors put these words there on purpose.

       Once you familiarize your students with these phrases, have them find the phrases in the texts, then have them write texts structures with the appropriate signal words and phrases.

       Once your students know the signal words and phrases the next step is graphic organizers. When you first begin working give your students complete graphic organizers, this will help them find what's the major ideas and find the supporting details under the major ides. This will help them be able to comprehend and retain what they have read.

       After students are very familiar with that different kind of graphic organizers, have them complete one on their own after reading a text.

       After this, students will be able to work on graphic organizers independently, be able to extract ideas from the text and demonstrate their knowledge in a graphic organizer.

When students can recognize the different types of text they can predict what information they are going to look for and what the text will look like.

Lesson 1

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VZ3evDXU88vx2uARp_M7Hrt9Al2EWrsytMwyP-1Gc9M/edit?usp=sharing

lesson 2

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tBK1ZRpErdnTzK_0s3ONTnd1Ya9mCE6e1burPwjB5H8/edit?usp=sharing

lesson 3

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SA3eFIaNhixhEFoyqrv7iKoq6JlvryiE6M_lUGdcvtE/edit?usp=sharing