Going Beyond Content: Fostering Students' Exploration of Text Structures and Purpose for Reading

by Melanie Stender, River High School, Hannibal, Ohio

I bet we can all recall a time that we asked students to read a fascinating selection only to realize through discussion and practice that few actually completed the assignment. Lucky teachers have only one such example; most of us can cite many times that students' failure to complete required reading baffled us.

Secondary students are required to read hundreds to thousands of pages of text per school year. That task is exceptionally daunting because of the vast differences among types of text and purposes for reading. Students construct meaning from Shakespearean sonnets far differently than from a textbook chapter about balancing chemical equations. Similarly, students' purpose for reading affects the complexity and extent of their learning, whether they are working with fiction or nonfiction.

Educators know that most of the pages students read are laden with unfamiliar, content-specific vocabulary and concepts, so they create prereading activities to generate interest and activate prior knowledge, during-reading activities to create meaning, and post-reading activities to extend and apply new knowledge. These strategies, effective as they are, focus largely on content. What many students need to supplement content-based reading strategies are text-based ones to help them familiarize themselves with the type of text and identify their purpose for reading. Incorporating into each reading assignment one or more activities to build familiarity with the structure of the assigned selection and establish purpose arms students with additional advantages as they navigate the text.

Text Structure

The interaction between students and text is more meaningful if students have enough familiarity with the text structure to take ownership of its message instead of relying on the teacher to explain it. When we assign one reading selection after another without giving any attention to their navigation, is it any wonder that many students don't complete the reading? They opt instead to get what they can from the subsequent discussion, realizing that we will make meaning for them. Vacca and Vacca (2005) refer to this practice as "assign-and-tell" and assert that it "dampens active involvement in learning and denies students ownership of and responsibility for the acquisition of content" (p. 5). One valuable way to facilitate students' independent meaning creation is to teach them about text structure.

Conventions of Text and Print

Allen (2004) suggests that teachers first help students identify the purpose of various conventions of text―such as headings, subheadings, legends, and diagrams―and conventions of print―such as italics, boldface type, and punctuation. If students need practice identifying the purposes of those elements, you might have them compare each one across texts. (How is boldface type used in my biology book, and how is it used in my favorite novel? How do graphs and charts contribute to my history book, and how do they contribute to my favorite magazine?)

Story Grammar

When conventions of text and print are second nature, you might begin to teach and model the identification of story grammar in narratives and types of informational organization in expository text. Story maps reinforce that pattern for students by requiring them to show connections among the plot points (exposition, climax, resolution), setting, characters, theme, point of view, and so on, in a narrative. Similarly, in an expository piece, a well-selected graphic organizer such as a Venn diagram, a problem-solution chart, or an idea web can help students comprehend the text by highlighting its informational pattern (Johns & Lenski, 2005). One last type of text structure to keep in mind is computer-based text. Students are adept at making meaning from the cryptic language of text messages, emails, and instant messages, but they need to be taught how to make educational decisions with technology. For instance, each year I have to teach students who I know are technology-savvy how to navigate links on an informational website and how to determine which sites are appropriate for research.

Purpose

If you ask a student his or her purpose for reading, the likely answer is either "because it was assigned" or "because I want to do well on the test." While those reasons are valid, they are too extrinsic and time-specific to foster lifelong learning. I've found that I can help students identify intrinsic and strategic purposes for attacking each assigned selection when I brainstorm with them different situations that require reading―for example, finding box scores in the newspaper, figuring out what programs are on television, following a recipe. As we categorize the responses, my students easily see that they read primarily for entertainment or for information; but they also recognize that there are many nuances of each category and that sometimes they can skim the text but at other times they must read word for word. So as I assign each new selection of text―regardless of whether the reading will be completed in or out of the classroom―I ask students to help establish a purpose. (Are we reading this to enhance our knowledge? To assemble something? To win a basketball game? For sheer enjoyment?) By my modeling this process consistently and involving students in it, the students learn to do it independently. And students who can do this―who can set a purpose for reading―are better prepared to tackle the text structure and extrapolate the information that fulfills their needs (Johns & Lenski, 2005).

Structure and Content

Modeling the Structure: Writing Questions

Who said we have to separate content-based and text-based teaching strategies? One way to deepen meaning and extend knowledge of content is to analyze and model the text structure. I do this with my high school students by involving them in the creation of review questions using Bloom's taxonomy. I first teach the six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Next I share a list of the verbs commonly used for each level of questioning―such as compare for the comprehension level and create for the synthesis level―and model the categorization of questions from the textbook into their corresponding levels. Then I assign each student the task of writing a certain number of questions for each level of the taxonomy that highlight important concepts from their current narrative or expository text selection.

Comparing-Contrasting the Content with Other Resources

Another method I utilize regularly requires students to compare and/or contrast a narrative or a situation in an expository piece to familiar song lyrics or movie plots. For instance, I ask students in Senior English to write an essay comparing and contrasting a poem from the Romantic Period to a modern song. As students explore the similarities between "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers or between "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth and "Country Roads" by John Denver, they see that both the content and the structure of the "old" selections are actually familiar and relevant.

Both methods, the question-writing activity and the compare-contrast activity, are effective ways to connect the teaching of content to the teaching of text structure and purpose. I would think both these methods could be easily implemented using social studies and history textbooks and probably science textbooks too.

However, by far the simplest way to encourage students to connect content and text is by fostering self-monitoring of text content and structure during reading. Teach students to question themselves at various stopping points in the text. (How does the material I read relate to the chapter title and subheadings? Can I learn from these pictures and maps? Can I relate the graph to what I read?) Such self-monitoring of content, structure, and purpose enables readers to synthesize all the components of reading text more effectively.

Everyday Lessons

Students remind me daily that making meaning from texts is challenging. In meeting that challenge, it is essential to prepare them to navigate different types of texts. We have to teach explicitly that which comes naturally to us: text structure and purpose. Arming students with such skills not only enhances classroom instruction but also prepares students for formal tests such as the OGT and SAT. Familiarity with text structures and the ability to establish purpose for reading will come in handy on such assessments as students tackle everything from directions to writing prompts. More importantly, students who can synthesize content, text structure, and purpose can most effectively construct meaning from any type of text they encounter in school, in the workplace, and in everyday life.

References

Allen, J. (2004). Tools for teaching content literacy. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Johns, J. L., & Lenski, S. D. (2005). Improving reading: Strategies and resources (4th ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt.

Vacca, R. T., & Vacca, J. A. (2005). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (8th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Melanie Stender is an English teacher at River High School in Hannibal, Ohio. She earned her bachelor's degree in English and secondary education from Marietta College and her master's degree in reading from West Virginia University. Melanie can be contacted at melstender@hotmail.com.

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