Teaching Text Features to Support Comprehension: (Maupin House)

When K-5 students understand how to read text features like diagrams, bullets, insets, and tables, they are reading the whole page--essential for deep comprehension of nonfiction and fiction text. In this revised edition of Reading the Whole Page: Teaching and Assessing Text Features to Meet K-5 Common Core Standards, seasoned educators Michelle Kelley and Nicki Clausen-Grace show you how to explicitly teach K-5 students to read text features, use them to navigate text, and include them in their own writing. The classroom-proven mini-lessons, activities, and assessment tools in Teaching Text Features to Support Comprehension help you: teach relevant Common Core State Standards and grade-level expectations; diagnose, monitor, and meet student needs with one of two level-appropriate assessments; evaluate knowledge with a unique picture book that can be downloaded that illustrates all the text features; and monitor and guide differentiated instruction with a convenient class profile. Sixty mini-lessons for teaching print, graphic, and organizational features provide ample choices for meeting the standards while adapting to students' needs. Flexible lessons, which follow the gradual release of responsibility model and increase in difficulty, can be used within the typical 90-minute reading block, during content-area instruction, in small groups, and as part of independent practice opportunities like literacy centers. Each lesson offers concept review, suggestions for differentiation, assessment options, and technology connections, requiring students to find, explore, manipulate, and create text features in their own writing. Even more activities--from text feature walks to scavenger hunts--help students integrate text feature knowledge as they read. The downloadable materials provided online include important resources and convenient lesson supports, such as interactive thinksheets that can be filled out directly on the computer, visual examples of each text feature, rubrics, the assessment picture book, and readers' theatre scripts.

Review :
Connie Dierking, Literacy Coach, teacher, and author of Linking K-2 Literacy and the Common Core: Mini-Lessons that Work!: Locating text features is just the beginning of comprehending all types of text. Explicit instruction in their use is the navigational gateway for successful reading. Teaching Text Features to Support Comprehension provides teachers with a common language necessary for guidance in text feature instruction. Michelle and Nicki have provided sixty mini-lessons that are teacher and student friendly. Ideas for introducing and reading various features allow teachers to differentiate instruction in fun and meaningful ways. The extensive appendix provides everything you would need to teach features in large group, small group and even in literacy centers. A very valuable resource for teaching text features well!-- "Connie Dierking, Literacy Coach, teacher, and author" This resource offers guidance for teaching and evaluating students' learning of nonfiction text features. Chapters cover print, graphic, and organizational features, and include mini-lessons that progress from simple to more complex features. A number of mini-lessons are provided with real-world examples and support materials, including a list of suggested titles for teaching. . . .The final chapter moves the focus from students learning individual text features to integrating the use of multiple text features when reading to learn. Recommended.-- "School Library Connection"