SKILL PROGRESSION Orient to Nonfiction Texts This progression includes four small groups that will support your students in orienting to nonfiction texts with increasing complexity. SMALL GROUP #1: Draw on Background Knowledge While Previewing You’ll need a collection of texts for students to preview. You can use any of the teeny-tiny texts. You might also ask students to bring their research bins, which are filled with texts. You’ll also need a copy of the “When you first start to read... orient yourself to the topic!” chart. RALLY Show students a few nonfiction texts and ask them to make a prediction about the topic of each text. “Readers, take a look at these nonfiction texts. You haven’t read these yet, but I bet that just by looking over the title and headings, you can figure out what each article will be about. Give that a try right now with your partner.” TRY IT #1 Coach students to activate prior knowledge by thinking about what they already know about a topic.
“Readers, here’s a tip. Whenever you start a text, it’s helpful to orient your- self, to get yourself set up to read. One way to do this is to ask yourself, ‘What do I already know about this topic?’” Display a chart. “Try this now with these texts—pick one up and talk with your partner about what you each know already about the topic. Keep going for a few minutes, first with the teeny-tiny texts, and then with other texts from your bin.” TRY IT #2/LINK Help students see that they may have prior knowledge they weren’t think- ing of—knowledge of how kinds of texts tend to go.
“Some of you might have found some texts where you thought, ‘Hmmm, I don’t know much about unique plants.’ But here’s the thing—you may not know about unique plants, like Venus flytraps, but I bet you know something about plants in general. What kind of things do you expect to find when you read about plants? Whisper to your partner.” “Yep, you probably expect to learn about where the plants grow, what the plants look like, who eats the plants. So you do have some knowledge that will help you read! “Go back to those texts with your partner, and this time, tell your partner what you expect to learn about the topic in the text, even if you don’t know much about the topic yet. You’ll want to think this way before every nonfiction text you pick up!”
Coaching to Support Previewing Texts • “Ask yourself, ‘What do I already know about this topic?’” • “You might not know a lot about this specific topic yet, but I bet you know a lot about the general topic of ____. Right now, brainstorm some of the things you know about ____.”
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Bend I • Strengthen Nonfiction Research Skills: Researching Plants
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