Informational Text Structures
I have spent the past week working on Informational Text Structures with my 5th graders. I was shocked to discover that this was almost an entirely new concept for them, so we did several fun little activities to solidify the concept. This week, they are working on their cumulative project, creating a mini-magazine about a topic of their choice with all the text structures present and a whole myriad of different text features, too. I can't wait to see their final products!
We began the unit by doing a carousel activity. All of my students KNOW what each of the structures means because we spend a lot of time reviewing the concepts during reading. I had them brainstorm five different topics that they could write information about. Then, they divided up a piece of chart paper into a section for each of the types of structures. They got to work writing short sentences that fit the specified type of structure. (At this point, I didn't even use the term "structure." I just told them to write an informative sentence that shows each relationship.) They did a GREAT job with this! It would also be a great assessment or mid-unit activity.
The next day, the students created a foldable from I'm Lovin Lit's Informational Text Interactive Notebook (which I LOVE and believe every upper grades teacher should own) that gives a great overview of all of the different text structures. We discussed the etymology of the word "Structure" and that helped the students understand that Informational Text Structure is the way in which an author builds a paragraph or article of information. I created an anchor chart while they made their foldable.
Informational Text Structures Anchor Chart
We are a Thinking Maps school, so my visuals were a little bit different than some others I have seen. We also generated an example (about ice cream, of course) for each structure. I can't tell you how many times the students have referenced this anchor chart while working on other assignments throughout the week. It looked busy to me at first, but it's full of information that the students seem to find useful.
Throughout the rest of the week, we completed an individual lesson and foldable from the Interactive Notebooks each day. Erin from I'm Lovin Lit has included separate paragraphs and lessons for each different structure which helped to solidify understanding of each of them.
Have I mentioned how much I love these?! Erin was also sweet enough to send me 5 extra free paragraphs about Alcatraz to use with my students. My students were FASCINATED by these paragraphs, and they are perfect for the older crowd. You can download these for FREE, thanks to Erin at I'm Lovin' Lit. If you haven't already, check out her blog for more great ideas!
After we did the foldables, they worked on some informational text structure task cards that I created. These task cards were quite the labor of love! I was under a time crunch to get them done since I needed to use them in my class, and each one seemed to take me forever to make. The cards include three different paragraphs, written in a different structure, about one topic. I also included comprehension questions on each card since we were working on some other nonfiction comprehension topics as well. The kids really enjoyed these and looked forward to completed their required two each day.
Finally, we are taking an assessment over each of the structures. I based my assessment off of the task cards we used, and it is a good way to gauge student understanding. You can download my informational text structures assessment for FREE at my TpT store.
I can't wait to see the final projects that my students are working on! It should be a great display of their learning and of the common core standards we have been focusing on.
Happy Teaching!
