The Importance Of Expository Reading

For my literacy lesson, I selected the article Why Do Animals Play? By Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld. The article focuses on animals and is an informational text exemplar aligned with NYS Grade 3 Common Core ELA test. I chose this article to help students recognize and comprehend informational text independently and proficiently. According to Fountas & Pinnell (2001), high-quality informational texts are key to students’ development of an important concept called “content literacy”, which involves the strategies required to read, comprehend, and write informational texts in a variety of subjects. Therefore, by participating in this literacy lesson, students will be able to enhance their comprehension skills by critically analyzing the story focusing on the text features.

In chapter five, by Cris Tovani, “Why Am I Reading This” explains how educators need to establish a clear reading instructional plan. In order to accomplish understanding students need to concentrate on main ideas from the readings. Tovani explains that it is vital for teachers to model how students should hold their thinking or slow down their reading. Throughout the chapters she gives examples as question strategies, highlighting text, or summarizing key points. As this will benefit students in their reading assignment. Tovani also explains throughout the chapter that teachers should model thinking aloud. This strategy will benefit students on how to negotiate difficult text.

Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning and begin to evaluate texts by drawing on a growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features

The essential literacy strategy goes along with the standards and learning objectives by using context clues to help the student figure out unknown or unfamiliar words. Students will build reading comprehension skills by using context clues for figuring out unknown or unfamiliar words while they are reading. Then the students will perform the strategies individually. The related skills address the use of prior knowledge of synonyms and antonyms during the hook and transition portion of the lesson. The reading and writing connections go along with the learning objectives, because the students will read their assigned book and picking out words they do not understand. The students will have to write the sentence with the unknown word in it, and use context clues to figure out the definition of the unknown word. The central focus for this unit of study is for the students to use context clues to better their comprehension of what they have read in their assigned books. The students will be able to use context clues within sentences to determine the meaning of unknown or unfamiliar words. These lessons deal with comprehending text by using context clues to help figure out unknown words. The lessons build off each other by adding more detail to learning about context clues. As the lessons progress the students will be more independent when using context clues. The first lesson is learning about what context clues are. The second lesson will focus on using context clues to figure

Gordon Grice is fascinated, maybe obsessed with the black widow. He begins provocatively “ I hunt black widows. I capture it. I have found them in discarded wheels and tires and under railroads tires. I have found them in house foundations and cellars…I have found them I hospitals and in the den of the rattlesnake…. (176) In this quote Grice start with first person in place and with the repetition of “I” so that the reader can get the attention into it. Grice’s purpose in the “ Black widow” essay is to inform the audience about the widow’s life style. He shows inspiration, fascination, respect and love for widows. He furthers his purpose by using rhetorical strategies throughout his text.

If you couldn’t read or write, how would you tackle your daily life? Being literate is a crucial part of everyone’s life; reading and writing are essential for a person’s success. Every single day, it’s used, whether it’s for an Advanced Placement Language class or reading a billboard as you’re driving past. As a child, I grew up reading on a daily basis and I believe that I am as successful as I am on behalf of it. Countless memories have been created, thanks to the multiple books that have been read and the umpteen amount of papers that I’ve written. Throughout the numerous years of my education, my teachers and parents left a long lasting impact on my reading and writing skills.

To assist students to “read with purpose and anticipation,” Vacca et al. (2014, p. 173) suggests, in their book Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, that teachers need to “create an instructional context” that activates their students’ “prior knowledge” and helps them to become interested in a lesson. Throughout chapter six, “Activating Prior Knowledge and Interest,” Vacca et al. (2014, pp. 172-173) explain instructional strategies that can lead students to “read with purpose and anticipation.” This chapter presents the reader with a plethora of instructional strategies and means for applying them, along with example for real educators. As I journeyed through this chapter, I discovered many instructional strategies,

Recently, according to Lucero & Montanero (2012) in their article Rhetorical structure and graphic organizers: effects on learning from a history text research on reading comprehension has evolved from not only strategy teaching to the analysis of activities to promote constructive learning (Lucero & Montanero, 2012). In order to comprehend an academic text, readers are required to consistently evaluate, elaborate and review text information. These types of inferential activities will promote an active role in the student 's task and in turn improve the quality of the process. This aligns perfectly with the basic definition of inquiry learning. Again, this supports how teaching nonfiction reading strategies early on to elementary students will help them be successful within an inquiry based learning system. Lucero & Montanero (2012) suggest that some of these engagement activities teachers could use are summarizing, asking and answering text-based questions , thinking aloud during reading and designing graphic organizers to aid student comprehension (Lucero & Montanero, 2012).

In “Writing to Read”, Graham and Hebert present the results of studies, which where thoroughly analyzed, in order to support the importance of writing instruction towards the development of reading skills. The report, however, was not created with the simple purpose of making an argument. Through the use of meta analysis, it recognizes the most effective approaches in order to aid teachers in developing and applying effective strategies.

Roehrig, Pressley, and Sloup (2001) state that teachers should determine what strategies a student might be using when reading and then assist them in learning

How can teachers use exploratory talk to support the development of reading comprehension? Use examples from the fiction books to illustrate key points.

* Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (ACELY1660), (ACARA, 2012). Learning to read is essentially learning to decode and understand the words/language written in the story and to construct meanings from those words (literacy) (Nicole & Roberts, 1993). The more language the children (and adults) hear and read the more developed their vocabulary will become (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998, Nicole & Roberts, 1993, Anderson et al, 1985). Reading fluency is enhanced with an enlarged

1. What strategies do I use before I read or view a text? How do they help me understand the text?

In the introductory lesson, I build my students’ knowledge about nonfiction text and text features by identifying the different text features then defining them (instructional material 1.1) in lesson 2, I review the previous days lesson, learning task, and academic language, and vocabulary terms before I introduce the learning target and learning task of the days lesson building new knowledge to their prior knowledge (instructional material 2.1). Each lesson segment build on each other to support students’ development of the literacy strategy. The support and instructional strategy included in the learning segments are applicable to all of my all of my students learning needs, including my student on an IEP and my struggling readers because of my knowledge of my students’ assets which I used to inform my choices when planning my instructional

Reading comprehension at a knowledge level is a complex task. Reading comprehension instruction that attempts to move students beyond the knowledge level to a place of true understanding is daunting at best and not something that can be left to guess work. A review of current literature in