More Books for Teaching Text Structure

My youngest son, a first grader, loves big cats. I'm embarrassed to admit that, three years ago, I would have had trouble distinguishing a picture of a leopard from a picture of a cheetah. Well, no longer. After a year of watching Big Cat Diary every morning and reading book after book about big cats, I can now easily rattle off the differences between leopards and cheetahs.

Of course, I can't just read the books. I'm always looking for good examples of text structures! When I found Face to Face With Cheetahs, I knew that this book would be perfect to add to my classroom library. Like Face to Face With Lions, this book starts with a personal narrative. Each successive chapter shows a different text structure. "Fast Cats" shows the causes and effects of how a cheetah's body is built for speed--and how these features can have drawbacks. "Racing for Survival" shows the problems that cheetahs face, and how some scientists are working on solutions.

While the book has many text features, it isn't as busy as other nonfiction books. Best of all, the text is quite cohesive and hangs together well. I could see taking paragraphs out of the text to look at in more detail; working with different chapters to talk about how the different text structures can work together; or exploring how the text features add to the information in the text.

Other text structure posts and items
Picture Books for Teaching Text Structure: Blog post with link to a list of picture books that show different text structures
Text Structure in Primary Grades: Blog post
Cause and Effect Activity and Texts: Short texts and activities for looking at the cause and effect text structure.
Problem and Solution Texts for Teaching Text Structure: Short texts with the problem/solution text structure.
Compare and Contrast Texts for Teaching Text Structure: More short texts! These have the compare/contrast structure, the most difficult to find in whole texts.