Informational Text

In reading group we are working on reading informational texts. There are many different types of informational texts that we will be exploring over the next few weeks. When reading informational text, the Common Core Standards have us do close reading of the text to analyze and gain understanding. One important part of reading informational text is to remember to keep our feelings, judgments and personal thoughts out of it; however, sometimes this can be very difficult to do, but the basic purpose of informational text is to gain meaning and understand what the author is telling us.

Reading informational texts differs from narrative texts (stories) in the way they are organized and require different ways of thinking about the text. Informational texts are everywhere and is the majority of what we read as adults.

Some things to do when reading informational text at home:

* preview the book, looking at the cover, title, table of contents, etc.

* activate background knowledge on the topic

*while reading investigate new vocabulary and use context clues to gain meaning

*discuss how tables, graphs, photographs, diagrams, subtitles, etc. give us additional

information to understand the text

* ask what they learned and give details to support it

We will begin by reading closely to gain the meaning of the text. We will identify the main idea of a passage/text and find details the author used to support the main idea. Eventually, we will be reading additional texts that are related to the first text. We will be comparing the texts and using them to help our understanding, because sometimes the author assumes we know more information than we do on a topic. This will include reading fictional texts on the same topic and using an informational text to support our understanding.

Informational texts are great for shared reading with your child. Take turns reading aloud to them, as well as them reading to you.