Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Text Features vs. Text Structures

In fifth grade, we move past identifying text features in nonfiction, to looking at text structures -- the way the author has organized the information in the book.

For a refresher course on text features, my go-to book is:



This book has a table of contents, headings, text boxes, pictures and captions, key words in bold, an index, and a glossary. (As a bonus extra, it has a narrative lead, in case you collect nonfiction books with a variety of leads!)

Here is my stack of mentor texts for text structures:


Question/Answer structure



Narrative structure



How-To structure



Sequential structure



Organized around the metaphor of a mountain



Organized numerically (bonus -- gorgeously written descriptive lead)



Compare/Contrast structure



Organized by colors



Main Idea/Detail structure



Sequential structure (tells the end first, then goes back and tells the steps)



Cause/Effect structure



ABC structure



Poem + Information structure


6 comments:

  1. Thanks for this! What a gift to teachers! I only know about half of these, so I have a whole new TBR pile!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Perfect timing! We looked at text structure today and these will reinforce!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a wonderful list! Thanks for sharing. I need to pass this on to my daughter who is a 3rd grade teacher. So many titles she can add to her collection.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I put these title on my Amazon wish list, so I could check out which books are on the library's shelves. To my amazement, they all showed up at my house today. What a nice surprise from my thoughtful husband!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great list! I am armed and ready to go to our school library to search for these books or to put them on a library wish list. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you, thank you, thank you! This looks amazing! Ordering all of these titles for my library. The kids will love them.

    ReplyDelete

Comment moderation is turned on.