Professional Development Center for Educators

Creating Worthwhile Lessons

featuring Informational Text

Kim Wagner
kmwgnr@udel.edu
302-559-6266
 Professional Development Center for Educators

Overview
• Meet twice a month
• Workshop
• Coaching
• Adjust focus each month
• Provide tools and resources to meet your student’s literacy needs

Today’s Goals
• Understand how to meet the 50/50 literature/informative text
goal
• Know the informative text reading standards for your grade
level band (below, grade level, above)
• Understand how “experts” read
• Design worthwhile cross-disciplinary lessons that feature
informative text
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Jot down some thoughts about this quote about informative text:

“Text features differ, too. (When was the last time you saw bullet
points in a poem?) Bold print, italics, headings and
subheadings, and sidebars are all more common in
informational text. Text guides such as tables of contents and
indexes, for example, differ in important ways, as do
illustrations and graphics and the roles they play. Of course,
we read such texts for different purposes, and that makes us
vary our reading approaches. “

Timothy Shanahan
 Professional Development Center for Educators

CCSS Implications for Informational Text

• Need multiple opportunities to read informational text

• Content based
• Paired with traditional literature

• Need instruction on how to read informational text in each

content area

• Need to use authentic (not just textbook) texts in content

instruction
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Examples of Informational Text

o Biographies o Photographs
o Autobiographies o Cartoons
o Books: o Paintings
o history o Articles
o social studies,
o science
o the arts
o Technical texts:
o Directions
o Forms
o Information displayed on:
o Graphs
o Charts
o Maps
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Standards

What exactly do the Common Core State Standards want us to

do?

Working with a partner- take your standards and order them

from K-5.

The standards offer a guide to build critical consumers of

informative text…
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Standards
The standards offer a guide to build critical consumers of
informative text…

BUT HOW DO WE CREATE WORTHWHILE LESSONS THAT HELP

OUR STUDENTS ACHIEVE THESE STANDARDS?!?
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Teacher Modeling
Fisher and Frey believe that there are 4 components to effective
teacher modeling of complex informational text

① Factors of complexity
② Disciplinary thinking
③ Word solving
④ Comprehension

 Must use “I” statements

 Include metacognition: the because, why and how of the
thinking
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Teacher Modeling

Factors of Text Complexity

• Teachers must first read and analyze the text

• Choose a few key concepts that will help the most

• Refer to handout: Qualitative Aspects of Text Complexity
• Use the 3-point stretch for teaching points
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Teacher Modeling

Disciplinary Thinking

• Students need to read or “think” like the expert in the

discipline that they are reading (Shanahan)

• Students that read informational texts like they are stories will
not be successful
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Teacher Modeling

Word Solving

• Looking inside words: Prefixes, suffixes, roots, bases

• Example: metamorphosis
(change) (form) (process)

• Look outside words: Context clues and resources

• Example: a dolphin pod
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Teacher Modeling

Comprehension

• Same strategies as in literature

• Predictions, visualizing information, determining
importance, making connections, summarizing, monitoring,
clarifying and questioning
• However, students must be extra aware of if they are
understanding the text or not
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Read Like an Expert

MATH

• Mathematicians can think in the abstract, as well as the

particular:
• Particular: 2 + 3 = 5
• Abstract: a + b = c

• Students that have a difficult time thinking abstractly, may

have a more difficult time with word problems.

HOW CAN WE USE LITERACY TO HELP?

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Read Like An Expert

Disciplinary Practices

• Read the problem to get a general understanding

• Reread to identify the necessary information and get rid of
unnecessary information (RI: Key Ideas and Details, Anchor Standards)
• Learn accurate definitions (RI: Craft and Structure Anchor Standards):
• technical
• sub-technical
• Read equations with appropriate directionality
• Explain- drawing, diagram, words, number patterns, equations
(W1: Writing arguments to support claims using valid reasons ands sufficient
evidence)
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Read Like An Expert

SCIENCE:

Scientists read for more than surface understanding

• they must be able to explain using several representations
• they evaluate the information with scientific methods and
accuracy in mind
• they expect information to be accurately and precisely
described
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Read Like An Expert

Texts You Encounter:

• Types: Proposals, lab reports, journal articles, and other documents
• Forms: prose, figures, diagrams, mathematical equations,
photographs
Disciplinary Practices
• Transform (RI: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas)
• Write for different audiences and purposes (W4: Produce clear writing
that is appropriate to task, purpose, and audience)
• Learn science vocabulary (RI: Craft and Structure)
• Take notes (W2: Write to convey complex ideas and information clearly)
• Understand the language of science (RI: Craft and Structure)
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Read Like An Expert

SOCIAL STUDIES

Historians believe
• everything is an interpretation
• can not be thought of as a truth
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Read Like An Expert

Text
• Documentaries, trade books, cartoons, primary documents,
newspaper articles, text books, songs, interviews
• Photographs, paintings, artifacts, maps, audio and video recordings,
census data

Disciplinary Practices
• Source and Contextualize: who, where, when, and why it was
written (RI: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas)
• Corroborate (RI: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas)
• Analyze Relationships Among Events (RI: Key Ideas and Details)
• Read multiple genres
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Worthwhile Lesson

A worthwhile lesson is derived from 3 sources:

①National/State Standards and District Goals
②Important concept or skills in the content for the
specific lesson
③Specific needs of the students
 Professional Development Center for Educators

Worthwhile Lesson
A worthwhile lesson is derived from 3 sources:
①National/State Standards and District Goals
o What do I want my students to learn?
o Why am I asking my students to learn this chunk
of information on this day in this way?
②Important concept or skills in the content for the
specific lesson
③Specific needs of the students
 Professional Development Center for Educators

Worthwhile Lesson
A worthwhile lesson is derived from 3 sources:
①National/State Standards and District Goals
②Important concept or skills in the content for the
specific lesson
• How will this lesson increase student
understanding?
• What must students learn to do more effectively?
• What cognitive processes (compare/contrast,
analyze, synthesize) will help students are at this
understanding?
③Specific needs of the students
 Professional Development Center for Educators

Worthwhile Lesson
A worthwhile lesson is derived from 3 sources:
① National/State Standards and District Goals
② Important concept or skills in the content for the specific
lesson
③ Specific needs of the students
• Require students to do, say, make or write something that
they see develops their understanding
• Presents an appropriately increased level of challenge (not
just a repeated activity)
• Know your students and apply the Goldilocks rule to set
your students up for success
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Classroom Example: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

ELA
Learning Target: Students will learn that
reading with a purpose in mind will help
them read closely to use what is explicitly
stated to make logical inferences.

Standard: RL1-Ask and answer questions about key details in

text
Content/Skill: Students will reread with this question in mind-
How is the wolf in this story similar and different from the way a
wolf is typically depicting in children’s stories? Students will
create a T-Chart to compare/contrast.
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Classroom Example: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Science
Learning Target: Students will learn that
reading with a purpose in mind will help
them read closely to use what is explicitly
stated to make logical inferences.

Standards:
Science: Life Science, 3-5: Organisms have both internal and external
macroscopic structures that allow for growth, survival, behavior, and
reproduction
Literacy: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the
text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Content/Skill: Students will read with this purpose_______________.
Students will “transform” this information by creating
________________ to ___________________.
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Classroom Example: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Math
Learning Target: Students will learn that
reading with a purpose in mind will help
them read closely to use what is explicitly
stated to make logical inferences.

Standards:
Math-
Literacy-

Content/Skills: Students will REREAD Wolves to create a space, providing

measurements, covering an area large enough for a pack of wolves to
live comfortable in. Students will work with partners to answer this
question.
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Classroom Example: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Social Studies

Learning Target: Students

will learn that reading with
a purpose in mind will help
them read closely to use
what is explicitly stated
to make logical inferences.

Standards:
SS:
Literacy:

Content/Skills
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More Information
Each notebook contains one of three articles:
• Not Just Pretty Picture by Norman and Roberts
• Points of Entry by Fisher and Frey
• Unlocking the Secrets of Complex Text by Ehrenworth

Jigsaw
① Read your article
② Talk with other people that read your article and become
“experts”
③ Meet with one member from each of the other articles
① Teach them about your article
② Learn about their article
④ Create something that demonstrates synthesis of new
knowledge
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Look-Fors
• Authentic informative text in content classes

• “Worthwhile” lessons that feature informative text

• Standards driven
• Content
• Literacy
• Content includes skills necessary to read like an “expert”
• Needs of student may be addressed by adjusting standards
expectations within grade level band
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PLC Activity
Pick a story from your Journeys curriculum that you will read
within the next month (perhaps on the 28th)

Create “worthwhile lessons” that feature informative text for

math, social studies, and science that ties to the story and are
relevant to what you are teaching in those content areas at that
time.

REMEMBER: Learning targets can be used in all content areas

and should move the students towards standards mastery.