Informational Texts

With the Common Core State Standards, there is an emphasis on informational text.  For elementary school, the split is 50/50 on informational text and literature.  As students move into middle and high school, the amount of instructional time increases in order to prepare students for the upcoming complex texts.

Reading literature and reading informational texts require different skills from readers.  Reading literature requires students to think about narrative elements, keep track of characters, make predictions, etc.  Informational texts tend to require students to keep track of complex ideas, analyze how events or persons are interrelated and understand how text structures lend themselves to 

In order to support this, we have been reading different articles on Monarch butterflies:

Students have been keeping track of ideas and text structures.  They're working collaboratively to read and analyze the text.

Here they are looking at different text features about Monarch Butterflies.

They did such a great job with this task!  They read a Time for Kids article and two other informational passages on the migration patterns of Monarch Butterflies.  We looked at cause and effect and my students did a great job with explaining how events in a passage go together.  Next week we'll watch a short video clip from Discovery on migration patterns, thus tying in that multimedia element.

I love when they're so excited about what they're learning :)