Assignment:
Review expository text structures as described and illustrated in the article "How to Teach Expository Text Structures to Facilitate Reading Comprehension." Describe how you would teach an expository text or a narrative with an expository text based on a winter season focus. Remember that winter is neither the same in every geographical location nor are holidays the same for every season in every culture. For your discussion posting, select a narrative and/or expository text from the list provided or from your own classroom or school library. Use a combination of narrative and expository texts to teach text structures.
For example, the narrative, The Mitten by Jan Brett presents a series of events (sequence) in which a lost mitten is found by animals who find the mitten useful. How does the sequence of events in this narrative create and motivate a curiosity to find out what a mitten is, what snow is, or what a meadow mouse is? Supplemental expository readings on a cultural responsiveness to snow, mittens and/or the various animals introduced in the narrative offer a rich opportunity to explore many text structures such as sequence, cause or effect, or comparison or contrast.
In your posting, be sure to identify the children's book(s) you have selected and the text structures that will demonstrate comprehension of text structures. Also, indicate how the narrative and/or expository text motivate students to seek additional information that supports text structures.
Teach this lesson in a preschool classroom or to a small group of preschool age children. Did the lesson go as planned? What would you change?
Recommended Books
- The Mitten by Jan Brett.
- On Christmas Eve by Peter Collinton (Wordless).
- Carl's Christmas by Alexandra Day (Wordless).
- Children Just Like Me: Celebrations! by Kindersley.
- The Shortest Day: Celebrating the Winter Solstice by Pfeffer.
- Lights of Winter: Celebrations Around the World by Conrad.
- Around the World Through Holidays by Conrad.
Discussion 2
Reading in the Content Area
Present in your posting a content-area book that can be used to explore such emergent text structures as schema, questioning, visualization, inference, and meaning making. What content-area book will you use? How will you engage or motivate students to comprehend using specific text structures as identified in the readings? How will you assess comprehension of reading in the content areas in such authentic assessments as drawings, compositions, or storytelling as illustrated in the readings?
See an assessment sample, visualizations for sunflakes in Figure of "Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers," page 517.
Recommended books:
The Icky Bug Counting Book by Pallota.
Splash! by Ann Jones.
One Hundred Hungry Ants by Pinszes.