Sunday, July 13, 2008

Information Literature in the Classroom

Most of what we read in our daily lives is information literature--newspaper & magazine articles, emails, blogs, how to manuals, recipes etc. Yet the majority of reading we ask our students to do is fiction. Are we doing our students a disservice by focusing on fiction?

Educator & author Linda Hoyt, in her book Make It Real: Strategies for Success with Informational Texts, reports that when she incorporated information texts into her daily instruction, she saw many shifts:
--the information texts hooked her students' natural curiosity about the world
--students were enthused and fully engaged in learning
--students began bringing artifacts related to their readings
--the curriculum load lightened--the science topic became the focus of the read aloud, shared book experience, and interactive writing.

"I saw science and social studies texts with new eyes. They were no longer just vehicles for content, they were now tools for reading instruction as well" (Hoyt, 7)

So, how do we, as teachers, make this change in our instruction?
How do we incorporate information texts into our instruction?

Take a peek at Linda Hoyt's site: http://www.lindahoyt.com/

3 comments:

Jeri&Alaina said...

The tutor can do a story walk discussing the book cover, the illustrations, review vocabulary, make connections, predictions, etc. Teacher would provide a folder that would contain the lesson that was pretaught. He would be given his own copy of the Reading, Social Studies, or Science text to review. He would be given a penciled-in calendar to know the pace of each teacher. He can be given a book to write anecdotal notes of what he covered with the group. He can also do running records and oral fluency with them. A communication log could be given to him.

Jeri&Alaina said...

Our grade level's Trophies includes an extension article after every story, and some stories are either informational fiction or nonfiction.

Each teacher will set routines for the tutor as appropriate for the time she will come and what the class will be covering at that point. If it is not manageable, we would think that she would speak to us about the situation to work through together.

No questions at this time. Thank you, Grade 3

Mrs. Tenkely said...

This is important, we need to teach our students how to read a variety of texts for all different purposes. I think that teachers focus on fiction in the reading classroom because they desire to instill a love of reading that fiction often encourages. A good mix is the key. Students need to learn to love all kinds of reading, the key is to make it relevant to your students.