Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a project to put together a list of books to use for teaching text structures. The list is finally finished! I've posted the document on Slideshare.
One of the hardest parts was finding books that have a common theme. After all, text structure is linked to content. The structure that an author chooses is connected to what ideas the author wants to convey. Using a scattered array of books, then, might not help students to see how ideas connect across texts.
But texts with similar topics can help to bridge the different text structures, and even help students consider similarities of texts within a structure. Two of my favorites for this are A Puffin's Year by Katherine Zecca and Nights of the Pufflings by Bruce McMillan. Both are organized in chronological order, and both detail how puffins come ashore to lay their eggs and raise their pufflings. However, each book explains the steps differently, and Nights of the Pufflings adds a slight wrinkle of problem and solution. Teaching the two of these books together can yield great results in both content and structure. (Plus, pufflings are really cute!)
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