Figurative Language in Expository Text

 Do your students struggle to analyze figurative language in expository text? Mine certainly do! For intermediate readers who are already having trouble with content-specific vocabulary and new concepts in expository text, analyzing figurative language is yet another big challenge. 

But being able to understand how and why authors are using this figurative language is vital for deeper comprehension. Often, a single simile is used to convey a big idea about a new topic. Examples of personification are used to show nuances. A pithy metaphor in the introduction pops up again in the conclusion. In all of these instances, being able to identify and understand the figurative language adds to the deeper meaning.

Sometimes, well-meaning teachers spend too much time in the identification phase and not enough time in the analysis phase. It's easy to see why! Struggling students can pick out the words "like" or "as" and say with confidence, "That's a simile." It feels like you are being successful. However, when asked to analyze similes, these same students might fall back on using the exact same words from the text instead of elaborating on the simile and putting it in the context of the key concepts from the text.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you plan to analyze figurative language in expository text.

And, if you'd like a ready-made resource perfect for sixth graders, try this: Figurative Language in Expository Text. Available as a printable and digital resource, this text includes practice with analysis, a fluency activity, and more. It is the perfect supplement to Wonders Sixth Grade Unit 1, Week 4.

Building Content Area Reading Skills: Anticipation Guides

A few weeks ago, I wrote about exploring nominalizations as a tool for helping readers to understand content area texts. Today, I'll be writing about a teaching tool for content area texts--anticipation guides.

Anticipation guides are tools that help readers to consider the propositions in a text before, during, and after reading. Simply put, the teacher creates 4-7 statements related to the big ideas in a text. Students rate whether they agree or disagree with each statement before reading, and then reflect again after reading. 

There are lots of resources available for creating anticipation guides. Here is the overview from ReadWriteThink, but a simple search will yield many more. Interestingly, each resource shows a slightly different twist on the anticipation guide--which I really like! I am always wary of educational approaches which must be implemented under exact conditions to be effective.

Vocabulary Preview + Anticipation Guide

In the example to the right, you can see how I've combined a vocabulary preview with the anticipation guide. The text is an introduction to decomposers, and there were key words that I wanted students to be able to read and understand. 

Students read this text with a partner, and it was interesting to observe the conversations that arose. Some pairs read the entire text first before going back to the text to consider the statements, while others considered each statement as they read. I suspect that preferred methods has something to do with working memory capacity...difficult to prove in the classroom, but intriguing to consider! Whichever method was chosen, students were carefully considering details and main ideas in the text and matching them up to prior knowledge--really important processes.

Column Headers--Consider Carefully!
Many of the widely available anticipation guides focus on the affective statements which can be interpreted and argued in multiple ways. As I work with fourth graders, I like to use a mixture of affective and factual statements. When I do this, I use the column headers "Yes" and "No" instead of "Agree" and "Disagree".

The guide to the left goes with Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean, one of my favorite picture books for teaching about water and watersheds. I chose statements that would direct student attention to some of the key vocabulary in the text, such as the word reservoir, and some key ideas in the text, such as the movement of water.




Unit Anticipation Guides
A unit anticipation guide can work to bring focus to a series of connected texts. This Antarctica anticipation guide was one of my favorite tools over many years. As we read and explored the topic, students referred back to the anticipation guide again and again, talking about which statements were supported by texts and which they were still curious about. 

The Eraser Game
Will students erase their first answers? Yup. It's frustrating at first to see students erasing their "Before Reading" replies to make them all correct. Students want to be right, and they want to be able to say that they knew it all before the text.

The Eraser Game goes away with careful modeling and cushioning. I like to talk about how great it is to learn from texts--"I didn't know that before, and now I do!" In fact, a change of answer from beginning to end is to be celebrated. That's what reading is all about! (It takes a bit for this lesson to sink in, of course.)

How often?
Any good instructional tool can become overused. As Graham Nuthall put it, "...when students experience a narrow range of classroom activities they rapidly lose the ability to distinguish one activity from another in memory. As a consequence, they lose the ability to recall the curriculum content embedded in those activities." 

I'm very careful to not overuse such a meaningful tool, and I use anticipation guides about once or twice per unit, or every 3-4 texts. 

As you can see, anticipation guides are great tools to help students get engaged in content area texts.


References

Nuthall, G. 1999. The Way Students Learn: Acquiring Knowledge from an Integrated Science and Social Studies Unit. The Elementary School Journal, 99:4.

Pegg, J. and Anne Adams. 2012. Reading for claims and evidence: using anticipation guides in science. Science Scope.

Sea Turtles and Expository Text: A Peek Inside

I love writing short expository texts, and I love sharing the texts that I create with other teachers. 

But I can't deny that there is always an uneasy tension between my inner writer and my inner teacher as I start a new project. The inner teacher says, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a set of texts with x, y, and z?" The inner writer groans--"You want what? Do you realize how hard that will be to write?"

So there is a sense of compromise between teacher and writer. I have seen enough hideously contrived texts to know that I shouldn't keep going if something isn't working. Teacher and writer must negotiate to come up with a workable compromise. (And all of this is going on in my head!)

Lights Out: Problem/Solution

This spring, I started to write a series of texts about sea turtles. The project began with a problem and solution text about the importance of turning out lights during nesting season. I find problem and solution to be one of my favorite text structures, probably because it is inherently optimistic. I also love the symmetry of problem and solution. It's fun to write.

I generally prefer to do all of the writing first before I mess around with formatting. Adding the formatting gives me another chance to reread every bit of text. I often read everything aloud to my family as well--my ten year old is a great listener and offers useful criticism. 

After the text has been written, read, and reread, the teacher side takes over and works on questions and activities. Waiting several weeks between text and questions helps me to look at the piece as a teacher instead of as the writer. This year, I've been experimenting with adding synthesis tasks to reading sets. These are very similar to the performance assessments that we used in the late-90s, but with a Common Core twist. Yes, they tap some of the skills that will be needed for high stakes testing, but they are also activities that are real and relevant for students.

Compare and Contrast

After I finished the problem and solution texts, I moved on to the bigger challenge--two compare and contrast texts, each one about two different sea turtles. 

These texts were hard to write. The writer in me balked at writing them, but the teacher stood firm--these are necessary. Compare and contrast is one of the hardest text structures to use. There are two topics, and the writer must work hard to balance them and make clear transitions back and forth. All too often, compare and contrast ends up sounding choppy and awkward. And conclusions? Natural, fresh conclusions to compare and contrast texts are especially difficult.

Of course, this is the lesson that the teacher-me wanted! I saw the need for two texts, both compare and contrast, but using different styles of organization. Compare and contrast texts can be alternating or clustered. Before students look for these structures in the real world, it's helpful for them to see study texts that present each. Texts on similar topics will help them to focus on the structure of the text instead of the content.

The first text, "Loggerheads and Green Sea Turtles" is written in the alternating style. This took a great deal of research and many hours of time. I found conflicting information from various credible sources, and delved deep into Google Books and other sources to find the best information possible. From a writer's point of view, I did create a comparison chart to gather my details. (I hate Venn diagrams for writing.) 

The second, "Leatherbacks and Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles", was a little easier. I used the clustered style, which deals with each topic in turn. Writing these two texts really helped me to see the strong similarities between description text structure and compare and contrast. After all, clustered compare and contrast could be looked upon as double description. 

The close reading activity that accompanies these texts is the one that my teacher self envisioned at the start of the project--using colored pencils to underline sentences referring to either kind of turtle. As I made the answer key, it clearly showed the difference between alternating compare and contrast and clustered compare and contrast. Victory!

The final activity of the unit challenges students to create their own compare and contrast text, using whichever style they would like. A chart of information is provided to make the task more of a writing task instead of a research task. 

Thank you!

Combining teaching and writing is a challenge. I'm so grateful to everyone who has purchased my texts on TeachersPayTeachers and offered such positive feedback. Thank you! 

You can find the texts and activities here:
Sea Turtles Expository Text

Making Inferences in Nonfiction

It sure has felt like Antarctica at school this week!

    As intermediate readers move into more complex, dense informational texts, they need to make more and more inferences. Talking about these inferences and the thinking behind them is essential.

    I created a new text with embedded questions to help readers get to this level of inferencing. Embedded questions are great for helping readers to notice key details in texts. The text is chunked so that it looks less intimidating, and readers know where they will find the clues they need to devise answers.

Visualizing
    Visualizing is a kind of inference! After all, authors never explain all of their details in a description. Authors depend on readers to fill in critical details from their own prior knowledge. In turn, those details help readers to fill in other gaps in a text.
    Consider the text at the right. How did people try to find a southern land mass? The word "sailors" is a key here. 

1. Read the text aloud with students.
2. Ask students, "Can you find the sentence that helps you to visualize how people tried to find a southern land mass?" Some will be able to; others may be confused by the mention of Greeks at the beginning of the passage.
3. Demonstrate underlining the sentence. 
4. Think aloud: If sailors tried to find Antarctica, what would they be using? Ships! Would they have modern ships? Why or why not? Students may recognize The Age of Exploration as a clue to the time period, or they may not. 
5. What other details from the text could we add to our visualizations? Icebergs, sea ice

    This led to such interesting questions and comments from students. Some students didn't recognize that "southern land mass" refers to Antarctica. Others started wondering--why didn't the sailors steer around the icebergs? Why was the sea ice such a problem? I followed up with a video from my Antarctica playlist to answer their questions at the end of class.


Pronoun/Antecedent Inferences
    Pronoun/antecedent inferences are essential to understanding expository text. Often, students have trouble tracking these, especially when the pronoun is in a different sentence from the antecedent.
    In this example, we marked the text with arrows to show the relationship between the pronoun and the antecedent. This helped to prepare students for the inference question: What is the name of one of the three research stations? 
    If this seems remarkably easy, I assure you that it is not simple for many struggling readers, especially ELLs. We had to discuss whether the station would be "Nathaniel Station" or "Palmer Station", and why! 
 

    Making inferences helps readers to put the pieces of a text together. These kinds of inferences need to be explicitly taught and discussed. 
    To make your own embedded questions, take a look at some informational text that you are sharing with students. Cut it apart and add inference questions--visualizing, pronoun/antecedent, text-based inferences, and reader-based inferences. How do your readers respond? 


For more on kinds of inferences, you can see Chapter 4-7 of my book, The Forest AND the Trees: Helping Readers to Use Details in Texts and Tests.

Here is the Antarctica text that I used in my lesson:

Making inferences from Emily Kissner

Notes
Looking for more texts to compare? I just finished Spring Paired Passages, which includes texts about weather sayings and tulips. Great for test prep, but with interesting enrichment and extension possibilities as well!