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Slide Notes

Informational text has become an integral part of a student's day in grades 9-12. These students should, according to the Common Core State Standards, have a ratio of 70% informational text to 30% narrative text. This ratio is a total glimpse of the students' school experience - representing all disciplines.

To ensure that all students are receiving the proper amount of informational text, we need to be able to tie various thematic examples to narrative pieces.

Let's take a look.
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Informative Text

Published on Nov 22, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

INFORMATIONAL TEXT

A guide to making connections
Informational text has become an integral part of a student's day in grades 9-12. These students should, according to the Common Core State Standards, have a ratio of 70% informational text to 30% narrative text. This ratio is a total glimpse of the students' school experience - representing all disciplines.

To ensure that all students are receiving the proper amount of informational text, we need to be able to tie various thematic examples to narrative pieces.

Let's take a look.

70 AND 30

AN UNBALANCED APPROACH
One of the concerns with the unbalanced scale of informational and narrative text is that we, as teachers of English, will lose our ability to teach the material we love most.

This is not the case. We can still instill in students a love of reading while allowing our students to connect with informational material.
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TEXT

"WHATEVER YOU ARE, BE A GOOD ONE." ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The text that you choose to connect back to your cornerstone text can be any type of informational. Think speeches, articles, documentaries, op eds, news broadcasts, etc.

If it ties into your themes, it's fair game.
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WHAT ARE YOU?

CREATING, CONSUMING, CURATING
These categories describe what a person should be able to do in any given situation.

Creators make something that has never existed.

Consumers look to use what has been created.

Curators are willing to collect that which has been created or curated in order to make it avail lank for consumption.
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NARRATIVE

TEXT THAT TELLS A STORY
People automatically put narrative text into the fiction category. That's not always the case. Literary nonfiction can also be presented in a narrative style, so don't get lulled into the idea that only fiction is narrative.

For the Common Core take on narrative text, follow this link:
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INFORMATIONAL

TEXT TO INFORM
Conversely, not all nonfiction falls into the informational realm. True informational text falls into a variety of categories that deal with giving the consumer information.

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PREREADING

CREATE 2 SENTENCES USING 4-5 PHRASES
This is a prereading strategy taught by @kylenebeers and @bobprobst.

Looking at this list, create 2 sentences using 4-5 words or phrases in each. These sentences will be attempts to predict what the article about to be read might say.

Once sentences are created, students will ask questions about each. Ultimately, they will have created their own text-dependent questions before ever having read the text.

CONNECTIONS

CREATING RELEVANCE
What is The Canterbury Tales about? What was Chaucer's point?

Making thematic connections between narrative and informational text gets to the heart of what a student needs to be truly "college and career ready".

The Canterbury Tales are steeped in discussions about gender roles, class systems, crass humor, and the role of religion in a culture.

RESOURCES

SUPPORT FOR THEMES CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE!
You can pull informational text from a number of places.

Scoop It: This is a curation site that recommends articles and links to users based on interests. Users can create multiple search profiles, and they can follow other users with similar interests.
www.scoop.it

Twitter: Another opportunity to pull articles and links. This has far less focus, and it is up to the user to filter the unneeded pieces in the search of what he or she wants to use.
www.twitter.com


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QUESTIONs

TEXT DEPENDENCY IS KEY
To ensure that we're engaging students in real learning, we need to align our instruction to the standards by infusing text-dependent questions that check for understanding while asking the students to utilize higher order thinking within the activities that have been designed.

In order to be sure that you are asking the right kind of questions take a look at this link: www.achievethecore.org/page/710/text-dependent-question-resources

Use this checklist to help determine the quality of your text-dependent questions: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9aktg2zu9ma6f6/Checklist%20for%20evaluating%20qu...
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