Entry #7

   Over the last two weeks, I have been doing a lot of work on the Teaching the Genre presentation. My genre is on expository text and every article that I have read has talked about how important learning to read expository text is for a child's comprehension. They push teachers to introduce expository text to students as early as possible in their reading careers so that they will be able to develop the skills that they need to learn from such texts (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Children seem to enjoy reading these kinds of texts, so why are we seeing so few children reading informational texts within our classrooms? Why not have them available and make it a habit to read these kinds of books if we know our students are interested in them?

   One of the articles that I read talked about the importance of direct instruction and how it is essential if teachers want students to become good readers of expository text (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Teachers need to be able to plan their instruction very carefully, by making sure to pay attention to three main things: building and activating background knowledge, teaching new vocabulary, and scaffolding. I feel that background knowledge is something that can be very easy to teach. I know that a lot of students come from different background and may not have the same amount of background knowledge as other members in the class, but all a teacher would have to do is build on their knowledge by teaching that student about the topic or having their peers teach them what they know so that they too can add that information into their background knowledge for the future. With informational text, there is frequently going to be new vocabulary within the readings, which is why it is most important for the teacher to teach any of these unknown words. The more practice and access students have with these kind of texts helps them learn to process information in new and different ways during their readings.

   Another article that I read talked again about the lack of direct instruction on comprehension strategies and how important it is for a child's comprehension. It talked about the importance of teaching student's the text structure of expository text and how it would have a positive effect on reading comprehension. The author says that, "expository text structure awareness is one reading comprehension strategy that should be explicitly and systematically taught" (Dymock, 2005, p.177). I feel like the author makes a great point about teachers needing to take the time to teach the text structures of an expository text and how they are different from others. They need to understand that you do not need to read the text from front to back in order to understand it. Once students understand the text structure, it will in turn help them better understand the text and will improve their comprehension of expository texts. I, myself, actually learned about the two different kinds of text structures: descriptive and sequential. These both were new to me. I learned that the descriptive structures focus on the attributes of something, whereas the sequential structure focuses on a series of events that progress over time.

   After reading different articles about how important teaching students about expository text is and how it can improve their reading comprehension, I want to be sure to include it in my future classroom someday. I want to be able to provide my students with informational books in the classroom that they will be able to read and become familiar with. I will also make it a point to read these kinds of books with them, in case some students don't take it upon themselves to read them on their own. The most important thing that I want to make sure I do is to teach my students the expository text structures so that it will help them better understand the books during their readings.

Dymock, S. (2005). Teaching expository text structure awareness. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 177-    

181.

Gregg, M. & Carver-Sekeres, D. (2006). Supporting children’s reading of expository text in the       geography classroom. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 102-110.