Back on December 22—just as teachers and librarians across the country were
wrapping things up for 2022—School Library Journal published a series of
three linked articles about nonfiction text structures.
Even though it was the midst of the holiday rush, the articles received a
good response because many school delve into their informational writing unit in
January, and teachers were gearing up.
In case you missed the articles when they were published, I thought I’d
share them again here:
Understanding
Text Structures in Nonfiction
Tips
for Teaching Test Structures with Expository Literature
Deconstructing
Kids’ Nonfiction: List Text Structure and the Five-Paragraph Essay
You can click the links above to read them in
any order you choose, or you can use links in the articles themselves.
The first article is an introduction that includes
lots of mentor texts sorted by text structure.
The second article picks up where the first one
left off. It includes activities for introducing and reinforcing text
structure. Discover what a text structure map is and how it can help students
as readers and writers.
The third article may surprise you. It explains
how some nonfiction books use a structure that has a lot in common with a
5-paragraph essay. Deconstructing these books can help students see how authors
use and ultimately expand on the basic 5-paragraph essay format.
I hope you’ll find these articles useful as you
think more deeply about the value of teaching and understanding nonfiction text
structures.
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