Reading – Extended Example

Identifying Universal Concepts and Connections

This extended example illustrates how discourse among content area educators can reveal concepts, language, and other connections among content areas. The knowledge gained by educators can be applied to develop instruction and curriculum to better support students’ transfer of knowledge to varied contexts and reinforce big ideas across content areas.

Context

In this example, a team of fifth grade educators has decided to explore ways to best teach, integrate and reinforce a specific ELA benchmark in reading. This discussion was the result of student data analysis that showed students were struggling to demonstrate proficiency of this benchmark.

Minnesota ELA Benchmark 5.2.5.5. reads: Compare and contrast the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts.

This fifth grade benchmark is part of the Key Ideas and Details sub-strand and explores the College and Career Readiness anchor standard regarding students’ ability to understand and analyze text structures. Content areas use and discuss text structures differently. The group began by identifying a variety of text structures, then discussed how each discipline deals with each structure differently and the implications for teaching and learning.

A Summary of Learning

Cause and Effect Structure

Through discussion of the cause and effect structure, they reflected on the very different ways in which several disciplines talk about this structure. While social studies may refer to “causation,” science may discuss “stimulus” and response, whereas ELA may discuss “motivation” or “agenda.” In each case these terms refer to a cause-effect structure. However, without specifically identifying for students the common discourse structure of cause and effect, students are less likely to bring their understanding of this structure to new and specific content area tasks or transfer current learning and practice to other disciplines. Therefore, teachers agreed to intentionally highlight and name the structure and its characteristics while teaching the content-specific academic language and discourse models of the structure.

Chronological (time order) text structure

In a second exploration, teachers reflected on the ways in which different disciplines convey time using chronological text structures. For example, the steps of a recipe present a different experience from an historical timeline which is different still from a series of observations of an experiment over time. While comparison of these text types reveals a shared use of time order, exploration of their differences reveals varied approaches to this structure, each with their own benefits and limitations. As a result of this discussion, teachers committed to explicitly teach students how to follow the conventions of these widely varied presentation methods while highlighting the underlying structure. They theorized that doing so will help learners to better read for understanding and to present their ideas to others in their respective content areas. In addition, students will be able to use their understanding of author’s craft to select the best presentation models for specific audiences and tasks outside of school.

Description text structure

A third exploration lead to discussion of the similarities and differences of the description text structure among varied content areas. They discussed how use of description text structures might vary by content, purpose, or audience, such as for geospatial description, use of objectivity within lab reports, or to sell a product in an advertisement. The authors may utilize different techniques or signal words specific to their audience, purpose, or jargon. So, academic language across disciplines is one element of comparing and contrasting inherent in benchmark 5. One specific set of examples raised in their discussion is the way in which different disciplines label periods of time in description: history might describe an era, while mathematics might discuss an interval, and music discuss a beat.

Cause and effect

While the previous examples highlight important differences in terminology, jargon, and academic language, there are content connections that were made in their discussions, as well. When discussing instruction of cause and effect structure, teachers explored the authentic opportunity to provide models and practice with this while teaching the social studies standards. With social studies benchmarks 5.4.4.16.4 and 5.4.4.17.4 students compare and contrast the different North American colonies and the impacts of the American Revolution on different groups of people, respectively. By embedding instruction and reinforcement on cause and effect within these lessons, these standards can be integrated in authentic ways. This provided great opportunities to compare and contrast the ways in which the authors of the social studies texts utilized and portrayed this text structure.

“Within a text” ≠ “in text”

While structures are often thought of within reading and writing of print material, teachers discussed the importance of helping students with reading graphics within informational texts. Examples from their discussion included considering the way that a math text may refer to slope while an economics text refers to a trend line while Freytag’s pyramid discusses rising action. In each case, we can compare the similarity of the line with the impact of context on the interpretations of the “events, ideas, concepts, or information” in each text. They all convey an increase in “something.” This is comparison of text structure that is not content-dependent but instead analyzing impact of structure on understanding content.

Conclusions

The team summarized their learning in the following way in their shared notes:

“Students need to be given models, discussions, and practice recognizing common text structures while also exploring the terminology and presentation models used in different disciplines. Therefore, the team will work to: