Chapter+5+Text+Matters

**Text Matters: Choice Makes a Difference**
pages 60-74

Appropriate choices in text for reading comprehension instruction lend themselves to powerful instructional moments. It is essential for every teacher to match a student to an appropriate text level that promotes comprehension. Your students will gain further ground in their literacy progress through a variety of text experiences and reading texts at instructionally-appropriate levels.

Harvey and Goudvis (2007) stress the following factors to consider when selecting text to teach towards reading comprehension: //**purpose, audience, genre, topic, writing quality, and text structure/features**// (p. 63-64). It is important to note the difference between **text structures** and **text features**. Text structure refers to the overall design of the genre of the text. For example, a compare/contrast text is very different in its structure/reading than a sequential text. Text features refer to the visuals, such as headings or bold-face text, employed throughout a non-fiction text. Text features may extend the meaning of the words in print (e.g., graphs, pictures) or support comprehension by highlighting main ideas and/or the structure of the text.

**__Professional References to Extend Your Learning__**
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 * Brabham, E.G., & Villaume, S.K. (2002). Leveled text: The good news and the bad news. The Reading Teacher, 55, 438–441.
 * This question and answer article (courtesy of Miami University, Oxford, OH) from //The Reading Teacher// provides information about leveled texts, using leveled texts for classroom reading instruction, and the challenges that a teacher can face using leveled texts for reading instruction.
 * How do you use leveled texts in your classroom, grade level and district? How does this text extend your thinking about leveled texts?
 * Duke, N. K. (2000). 3.6. minutes per day: The scarcity of informational texts in first grade. //Reading Research Quarterly, 35//(2), 202-224.
 * To become capable readers of informational text, Duke proposes that young children should have ready access to a range of informational materials in their classrooms and schools so that they can develop the distinct genre-specific skills required for making meaning. "Learners must have experience with the particular genres in question in order to fully develop the ability to read and write (in) those genres." (p. 206). Her finding that no more than four percent of texts displayed in low socio-economic classrooms were informational (high SES classrooms were only marginally better) was troubling. Children who, arguably, could benefit most from genre-specific reading skills attended schools that provided the least access to them.
 * This is a great article to use as you discuss the ways that you integrate informational texts across your curriculum.

===__**Technology Resources to Support Text Matters**__ ===
 * The Florida Center for Reading Research provides graphic organizers in "Student Activities" to support the students' understanding of text structures and text features.
 * If your school has a document camera or an electronic whiteboard, you can  create a whole-group mini-lesson to display different readabilities of text: just-right, challenging, easy texts.

===Video Clip: Dr. Nell Duke's Doing What Works Expert Interview: Choosing the Right Text===