Reading and Writing Informational Texts

Get It Done! Writing and analyzing informational texts to make things happen Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith, James E. Fredricksen 


Say:

For my internship, I opened the unit for informational texts and I definitely learned a lot about teaching informational texts. Wilhelm and Smith outline the different kind of explanatory and informational text structure, which was similar to what I taught my students. The book also notes that each of these structures shows a specific way of thinking. I think this is important for informational texts because even though structure isn't the most engaging thing to talk about with students, we need to show them the connection between how the writer crafted the text and what that means for us as readers. When I began the unit, I asked students their opinions/first thoughts on informational texts, they said it is boring and it is articles that just describe, tell you about something. I then kind of talked about all the informational texts they are given every day, not including school work, and that understanding those texts are super important for us as critical readers and consumers of information. The hierarchy of informational and exploratory text structure was interesting and I think I learned a different way of thinking about it because I strictly came from the typical informational, read articles way rather than exploratory texts. 

I liked the way the book set up each chapter and made it very practical and adaptable for various situations. I appreciate the lesson plans that they show because it helped me visualize how I could take these into my classroom. I felt like the summary chapter was key because with both my 8th/9th classes, they've sometimes struggle to find the main idea and perhaps this boils down to whether or not they know how to summarize something, which will help concisely pick out those big/main ideas. Describing is also brings in critical thinking because there are so many different possibilities as to how we can incorporate this, especially across multiple disciplines. The book notes a focus on process description, which reminded me of how we have talked about students thinking about their thinking. I thought the describe process was very similarly aligned with metacognition and thinking through different processes. I also thought the defining section was really nice because even though we always bring in abstract ideas that have multiple definitions, we don't really take the time to teach them how defining can be used in their writing as well as reading strategies. Compare and contrasts are used a lot and in different context, but they definitely take critical thinking skills. You can compare and contrast different perspectives on the same event or how different informational texts are composed. I never really thought about classification because it always sounded like it belonged in science; however, I definitely can see students benefiting from classifying different types of genres, styles, motifs, or characters. Cause and effect is probably my favorite especially to do with literature because I love looking at the characters from a psychological perspective; looking at their actions and thinking about what truly caused them to do a particular action is great! I think most students think cause and effect can be boring when talking about information text, but teaching them to craft their own cause and effect essays/writing assignment could be really engaging. Some have mentioned that teachers are doing problem-solving activities in their classroom and I wish I could really see it. I haven't had that much experience with problem solving and creating meaningful experiences for kids to create their own problem-solving writing project. 

The English Department at Dutch Fork Middle is very collaborative so the teachers come up with specific goals for their students. I worked with both CP and English I students so for CP, they were focused on skills such as main idea and finding bias, opinions, and facts within the informational texts. English I was specifically framed to focus on rhetoric and analyzing speeches. It is interesting to compartmentalize this unit because I feel like students fail to see the larger picture. Also, the strategies in the book seem to bridge between reading and writing informational/exploratory texts; however, I haven't really seen a lot of emphasis on writing informational/exploratory texts. I mean I had an amazing time analyzing articles and current events that went under informational text, but I didn't really think about the possibilities of getting them to write their own and create something with the text structures that we have been analyzing.  


DO: 

The one thing that I've done in my internship that involved informational text was using visual images as informational text. I am attatching the lesson plan I used in the class. I was trying to get students involved in analyzing the visual aspect of informational texts. It was definitely a great conversation starter and the students seemed to be engaged! 

Daily Lesson Plan

Instructor And Room #: Grooms 115	Date & Start-Stop Times:  11/2/15 55 min	Subject and Block/Period: 4th period 12:25-1:26		Unit and Topic: Informational Texts Main Idea
Student Objectives: Students will determine the main idea of visual images. Students will infer contextual meaning for visual images. Students will discuss the purpose of visual images as informational texts.			SC Standards/PACT/Common Core RI5: Determine meaning and develop logical interpretations by making predictions, inferring, drawing conclusions, analyzing, synthesizing, providing evidence, and investigating multiple interpretations. RI6: Summarize key details and ideas to support analysis of central ideas.
Items to Display as Agenda:  (Activities) Review Ch: 3 Notes with Kahoot! Visual image analysis (small groups)
Purpose: Opening Statement of Value for Day’s Lesson—the WHY The purpose of this lesson is for students to review and discuss how informational texts work within today’s society. Starting off with this unit, students will understand how informational texts relates to the world around them and the significance of being able to properly analyze the information presented to them. I want students to think about how visual images are considered a informational texts and how these visual images reflect parts of our society.
Lesson Procedures: (Introduction, Development, Conclusion)  Introduction: As students come into the class, they will be directed to open their chromebooks and log into nearpod(online note taker). I will have the slides/notes on nearpod for the informational text unit. I will tell students to reflect/review out loud some of the notes they took Friday. I will quickly go over the slides. Once students have finished reviewing, we will go over a Kahoot review (classwork grade). This is new stuff for them, so I will stop accordingly to what they miss/need more explanation. Development: Once we have gone through Kahoot, I will instruct students to put their chromebooks down, then I will say: “what are some types of visuals that are informational? Why do you think visuals are used to inform? What kind of information do they possible convey?” I will pull up the Kevin Carter photo of the Sudan child. “so this photo carried a lot of weight and one a Pulitzer prize for photography.” “How do we go about analyzing photos?” (I will model with starting with observations and write on SB) Then I want to model questioning, what do we not know, what are we left wondering about the photo? (students will also join in). So once we have gone through the photo, I will give them the background story of the photo. Then I will tell students that they are going to look at their own visuals in groups to analyze the photo for the purpose of finding the main idea/message of images as well as looking at the details into how the artist created that message with visuals. Grouping them into 3s (one group 4), I will direct students to look at their handout folder in google and their will be a picture slide which has each groups picture on it. Once students are placed in the groups, I will pass out the visual analysis handout for the students to write their answers on. I will explain the handout and then let the students work collaborately. I will walk around to each groups and monitor their progress. Conclusion:   Once the groups have completed the handout, I want each group to talk about their picture and what they came up with in terms of the message/main idea and how they derived at that idea. They can remain in their seated groups and the other groups will look at their Google slide so they can see the picture. After each group has presented, I want to close the lesson by referring back to the purpose of analyzing visuals and asking the students how visuals are considered informational texts. I want to end by talking about the visuals that are constantly around them and that they need to understand how to look all information, no matter what format it comes in, and be able to analyze the potential information that outside institutions are telling the population.
Materials: Kahoot Review Nearpod notes (on google drive) Image Slide show (on google drive) Visual Imaging handout
Assessments and Assignment: The visual imaging handouts will be collected and turned into as a classwork grade. The Kahoot review will also be saved and put into a classwork grade.