Common Core Reading: Informational Text Standard 5

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard 5 (CCRA.R.5) states: "Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole."

For this standard, third graders (RI.3.5) must "use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a grade 3 topic or subject area."

Library Skills: Text Features from the University of Missouri lists a variety of great resources for teaching nonfiction text features:

• A Five Day Unit Plan for Teaching Text Features from Scholastic introduces nonfiction to your class. One particularly compelling part of the lesson is Stopping a Toppling Tower, a sample text by Mary Kay Carson about the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• A handout entitled Organizational Features of Nonfiction Texts summarizes text features and acts as a springboard for Using Science Texts to Teach the Organizational Features of Nonfiction by Emily Manning for readwritethink.org.

To help kids with hyperlinks, try The Frog Beyond the Fairy Tale Character: Searching Informational Texts written by Janet Beyersdorfer for readwritethink.org. For use of clickable images, check out Types of Rocks (also mentioned in my July 8 blog about W.3.8).

For fourth and fifth grades, this standard changes gear. RI.4.5 tasks students with describing the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text." RI.5.5 builds on this by asking students to "compare and contrast the overall structure . . . in two or more texts."

A must-have is 20 Strategies to Teach Text Structure from Literacy Leader. This 29-page document gives you strategies, posters, tables, and practice activities. Head over to Teaching My Friends to see photos of how this was used in a classroom.

What am I taking away from today's standard? Instead of just using nonfiction texts in my classroom, I need to actually teach students how to use them. You can bet that I'll be pulling out Stopping a Toppling Tower and 20 Strategies to Teach Text Structure for my fourth grade class this year!