3 Ways to Use Non-Fiction Text
I always sit down to choose non-fiction text for instructional reading groups with a whole range of thoughts buzzing through my head. I have found that it helps if I am clear about which one of the following I am trying to achieve.
1. Strategy practice
Here my goal is to give the opportunity for guided practice of comprehension strategy (or decoding strategy) that I have explicitly taught. The content becomes secondary – it is the context for practice. If we only get half way through a text then so be it. I will have achieved my goal if I know that my students have spent the last 20-30 minutes getting the mileage they need to help them habitualise a new strategy.
2. Mastering some content
A subtle shift in emphasis occurs when I use my instructional reading group time to wrestle with some content that is applicable to some other curriculum area – science, social studies, health, the arts. As a group we may employ a whole range of strategies to build some understanding of a concept, or a process which can be enlarged on in other ways in other curriculum areas.
3. Understanding how a genre works
Here my intention has now shifted to using the instructional reading time to support my written language programme. If we are writing information reports, explanations, arguments then it makes sense to use my instructional reading time studying good models (and maybe even not so good models) of the genre, indentifying the structure and language features to support my students own writing efforts.
Of course I can achieve all three at once ... hmmm maybe not.
The first is about equipping my readers with the tools they need to be ‘good’ readers.
The second can only be done meaningfully if the students have the skills to construct meaning for themselves.
The third requires high order evaluative processing or critical thinking.
Being clear about what I am expecting from my readers, making sure they understand that as well, and just focussing on one thing at a time makes a huge difference.
Our Non Fiction reading resources have been written to support you with all three of these outcomes.
Click here for a FREE sample from our new resource ‘Reading across the Curriculum 3: BIRDS’ to see how we do this.
Posted
20 Jul 2011, 10:00:08
by
Hilton