Teaching Text Structure

I haven’t always focused on teaching text structure as a reading comprehension and writing skill, but now I will never not teach it. Teaching text structure allows me to teach writing skills and then transfer them directly to reading texts to see how published authors use the skills we are learning while also clearing up confusion.

I haven’t always focused on teaching text structure as a reading comprehension and writing skill, but now I will never not teach it. Teaching text structure allows me to teach writing skills and then transfer them directly to reading texts to see how published authors use the skills we are learning while also clearing up confusion.

Informational Text Structure Definition

While vocabulary is the most often cause of breakdowns in comprehension, structure is a close second. Structure is how something is organized. The informational text structure definition that I use includes various levels:

• Sentence
• Paragraph/Multi-Paragraph Structure
• Information-Specific Text Structure

Sentence Structure

Most people focus only on multi-paragraph confusion, but it can happen as early as the sentence level. There are several ways to help students learn about sentence structure.

1. Teach students to write sentences with different structures. Having a sentence structure focus of the week ensures students create different sentences while reviewing different kinds of material. (Check out 5 Ways Teaching Sentence Writing Solves All Your Problems).
2. Use Juicy Sentence Protocol. This strategy helps students break down complex key sentences in the reading. Making time to focus on just one sentence and to break it apart into chunks helps students comprehend. If you want to do JSP but don’t have time to pick a sentence, have the students nominate a complex important sentence and do it on the fly!
3. Use Syntax Surgery. This strategy from Reading Nonfiction by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst focuses on using annotation to track antecedents and cut out nonessential phrases, adjectives, and adverbs to get down to the basics–nouns and verbs.

Paragraph/Multi-Paragraph Structure

This is about paragraphs in general. First, I teach that informational paragraphs include

• a topic sentence
• 3-4 key details (connected with transitions)
• a concluding statement

Students practice writing paragraphs with these components, and then take that knowledge over to reading. Ask students which sentence is the topic sentence, key details, concluding statement. Surprise! They don’t always follow the order I taught (or some might be missing!). Sometimes I take the sentences and list them separately so they can examine them more purposefully. These examinations can help us turn rigid knowledge into flexible knowledge helpful for the real world.

As we continue, we can examine the parts of multi-paragraph structure.

• Introduction (and its parts)
• Body paragraphs (and their parts)
• Conclusion (and its parts)

Similar conversations can be had. Where is the introduction? How long is it? Where is the thesis statement? How many body paragraphs are there? How are they organized? Have students read an article and draw lines indicating where they would break the article into sections and add headings. You can even remove headings from an article that has one and then have students check themselves against the author.

Examples of Text Structure Paragraphs (and Essays)

The basic forms include

• Sequence (biography, summary, etc.)
• Problem(s) and Solution(s)
• Compare and Contrast
• Cause(s) and Effect(s)
• Argumentative (pro and con, harms and benefits, etc.)

The forms themselves are not that difficult for students to understand. Once they realize that there is a form, they can plug any of these into a standard outline. Make sure to include prompts for all of these types over the course of the year, and by the end, they will be able to take a topic and turn it into a paragraph, essay, or speech using any of these forms.

In reading, you can ask students which form the writing is taking. It can lead to interesting discussions where they see evidence for multiple forms but need to decide the primary form.

So, how do you schedule this all?

Assign a sentence type and text structure form for each week. This will remind you to plan for it. I like to start with sequence-style tasks because they are straightforward and a great building block for the basics of paragraph and essay writing. My week looks something like this:

Monday: sentence task

Tuesday: sentence task

Wednesday: text structure paragraph (or essay)

Thursday: sentence task or additional paragraph/essay time

Friday: revision task

For more specific guidance, I highly recommend The Writing Revolution 2.0.