How to Teach Reading by Genre

A few years ago (maybe five or six) our state standards changed for reading, pretty dramatically. I know all of you who have been through the Common Core Craze can understand that.

I, however, am from Texas, where we do what we want *snap snap*, and Texas moved to genre-based standards several years back.

At that time, my reading program was based on the Reader's Workshop model, with adjustments to suit me, and my shared reading three days a week was fiction. The other two days was informational text.

This was great for me (I love fiction, and I tied my informational articles to science, so double whammy), but it didn't exactly address my new genre-based standards, which included literary genres: fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction (biography), and informational genres: expository, persuasive, and procedural. I had some work to do to teach reading by genre.

One of the first things I did was take a look at my standards and figure out which standard was expected to be taught (and honestly, tested) in which genres. I used the document below to figure out where I had to teach different standards, like cause-and-effect, predicting, making inferences, and sequencing.

Then I chose some titles for each genre that I wanted to focus on as mentor texts for really understanding how that genre worked and how good readers approach that genre. My kids and I worked through a variety of texts, noticing the features of each genre and recording them, and other important characteristics (like author's purpose, which is actually the essential reason genres are different), and charting them on some giant charts.

To help kids make the distinction, I divided them up onto literary and informational matrices.

During the study of each genre, we examined several texts and isolated the essential elements and strategies to use to best comprehend that genre.

Poetry
Poetry was a struggle for many students. They didn't really know how to start! To give them a handle on the main elements of poetry, we used an acronym that my colleague and I created: POETS. The chart below shows what students would look for in a poem. They marked evidence in different colors for each element, trying to put them together to make meaning out of the poem.

This chart shows how we read for the elements, whole-class, and mark our evidence.

I love reader's notebooks. For each genre, we responded using different strategies. The strategy shown from my model notebook below was great for poetry. I honestly can't remember the name, but this is how it works:

1. Read a poem aloud to students - each student has a copy to mark up as you read.
2. Read again, slowly, instructing students to find a spot to respond to. Students underline the line and put a star at the end of the line. They quickwrite in response to the poem.
3. Read the poem again, very slowly. As you get to the place where students responded, they jump in and read the response they wrote.

The first time we did this, my kids were a little uncomfortable and nervous. But you know, learning happens when we don't quite know what's going to happen! I did it again, with a poem called "Shelling Pecans," and they seemed to have a better experience, because they expected to share. It was a very interesting strategy that I would use again! 

Other posts on teaching poetry

Fiction
When I introduced fiction, I made sure to introduce a variety of genres - I really spent some time here, choosing texts from each genre to make sure that students had a good understanding of the varieties of fiction they might enjoy reading. We read historical fiction (Nettie's Trip South), and science fiction (Sector 7). We read myths and folktales! And at the end of the unit, one of the kids' most interesting responses (I always ask for their input) was "I never knew there were different kinds of fiction."

How rewarding is that?

An important part of a strong reader's workshop program is independent reading. While it's important for students to enjoy reading (really the most important thing), you have to find different ways of ensuring that students are applying their strategic thinking in their independent reading. One fun way is the question ring below.

I hole-punch the cards in the corner and put them on a binder ring. I hang them in the classroom library, and students can choose a question to respond to in their independent reading. There's a ring for each genre. We practice using the rings to respond to our reading during our whole-group lessons, and then, as we practice with each genre, I add the rings to the library.

Other posts on teaching fiction

Drama

Drama is a very unique genre as well. As we read dramas, we add to our chart of drama features. It's important to do more than simply name the features. We need to help students understand the purpose of that feature, so they know how to use it. For example, students very readily point to words in brackets and pronounce, "stage directions!" But do they use those stage directions to understand how a character is feeling or acting? If not, then we have to teach them how to do that!

Other posts on drama

Expository
Expository text is very focused on pulling out important information. We practice my favorite summary strategy: providing each team with a sentence strip. They write the main idea of their paragraph and then we put them all together to build a super summary! You can read more about that here.

I also added my Expository question ring to the classroom library!

Other posts about teaching Expository text

Persuasive
Persuasive text is a very specific type of informational text. It's informational, but it's tinged with someone's bias and persuasive techniques. I used this persuasive cube in partners to help students think through a persuasive text and identify the persuasive techniques and arguments used by the author.

As I introduce new genres, it's important for students to learn how to navigate between genres. I use these three questions to help students think about what genre they are reading. It's so important for students to naturally think about texts differently to determine what's important about each genre. Students who are fuzzy on this read each genre the same, usually like fiction, and studies show they are the least able to navigate those genres. So we spend a lot of time on it!

The chart below helps kids remember to think differently on three major genres:

Genre bookmarks are a great way to help kids be independent in their identification and thought about genre during independent reading. If you provide them with each bookmark as you learn about each new genre, they can pull their set of bookmarks out during independent reading.

I copied them onto colored cardstock and provide them to students, one at a time. Students "grow" their set, and when they choose an independent reading book, they identify the genre, pull out the bookmark, and think about the questions or items under the "Look for" part of the bookmark.

And then there's testing.

Dun-dun-DUNNNN!

I know, I hate it, too. But if we teach our children to be real readers and real writers, we can more easily teach them to navigate the test structures and be successful. When we focus only on testing, we neglect the real thought and rigor of the world of reading and writing. Instead, focus on real reading and writing, and then bridge it to the test. This is how I bridge genre instruction:

We reviewed each genre with a mini-selection. Each student had a copy and they practiced using the three questions to decide on their strategy for approaching the text (ex: Do I look for characters? conflicts? main ideas? arguments? stage directions?). We marked the essential elements, and decided on the author's purpose. Then we brainstormed the kinds of questions we expected to see on the test and recorded them on our chart.

We repeated this for the most frequently tested genres.

And we built our test-genre wall!

 We developed a strategy chant to remember what's important about each genre! It goes to the tune of a cadence, like "Sound off- 1-2". The first four stanzas are the verses, and the last stanza is the sound-off.

I cut up a million questions from the released tests, and students sorted them into different genres, based on the evidence they could find in the question and answer choices. It's incredible how much they could infer, just from the questions and answers!

These activities are part of my 200-page Teaching Reading by Genre materials on TPT. It's full of teacher planning tools and printables, lesson ideas, anchor charts, and strategies for each genre!

And my Genre Study Book is a great way to provide students some reader's notebook pages or a folder book for reference, as you undertake your genre study!

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Organizing Writing Mentor Texts

If you read my recent post about my closet, you are probably surprised that I would title any future post with the word "Organizing". My closet is, of course, an embarrassment I have recently shared with the world, but in general, I'm pretty good at creating organized systems. One of these I just started this year is our writing mentor texts library.  

Not all of these books are writing mentor texts but about half of them are!  

  It's working for us, so I thought it might be the perfect idea to link up with Primary Powers' Organization Blog Hop!

As a Literacy Coach, I help teachers plan for writing. Sometimes, we are desperate for another kind of writing model text for a specific skill or strategy, and we are stumped! To help us plan effectively, I started ordering books based on specific traits. You can find one of the lists I used here at Empowering Writers.      After the books came in, I set to organizing them. I wrote a specific characteristic of writing on each index card and made piles of books.   

From there, I divided them up into baskets and put them on specifically designated shelves:  

 I labeled each basket with the writing skill or strategy that the books were great models of. Some of these are great beginnings, great endings, character development, sensory description with the five senses.

Of course, Patricia Polacco gets her own baskets, as do these other great mentor authors: among them, Tomie dePaola, Cynthia Rylant, Gail Gibbons, and more.

To help us use the books well for planning, I made little stickers that go on the inside cover of each book. The image and label on the sticker correlates with the basket label. I printed the labels on sticker paper.

I cut them into strips to stick inside the books.

Here's how it works. This basket is labeled "Generating Ideas for Writing." In it, I also include books about the idea of writing, like "Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street" and "What Do Writers Do?"

This book, Little Red Writing Hood, tells a story of a pencil character writing a story. It blends Little Red Writing Hood with writing tips. 

 On the inside cover, I include notes: just some ideas about how to use the book to teach writing strategy.

Throughout the book, the tips about writing are interwoven with the story. I used post-its to mark pages where there were writing tips, strategies, or potential for teaching. 

It's still a burgeoning system, and we're adding to our library a little at a time, but it's a start! Want a freebie to get started? Grab the basket and book labels for free!   

  Check out our other organization tips by hopping to the next post - Mrs. Richardson's Class, and learn all about organizing guided reading groups!   

  Or, if you'd rather, start at the beginning of the hop and check out all the great organization tips! Pin It

Guided Reading Update: Good Readers statements

You know when you notice your kids do weird stuff when they read to you? But then you're not always sure what to do about it?

Yeah, that's a common problem.

Here's another problem:

Sometimes, at the beginning of a lesson, we say, "Today we're going to practice making predictions". And the kid looks at you like, "Well, that's great." 

Then you say, "So let's look at the cover. What do you predict will happen in this book?" and the kid goes, "I don't know. I don't know how to make predictions. You might want to explain this a little more thoroughly if you actually expect me to do it."

Ok, so kids don't actually tell us that. They usually give us a blank stare or something. But that's the truth, right? We ask kids to do this stuff without explicitly stating how to do it.

That's why I created my "Good Readers" statements. They are written to explicitly but briefly introduce the strategy we want kids to use. I wrote statements for comprehension and decoding strategies. And guess what? You can download them for free! Just head over to my TpT store and download it as part of the Rolling Out Guided Reading Freebie.

Here's a little pointer about creating a Good Readers statement to use as a strategy focus during guided reading:

• For example: Good readers make inferences.
• This statement doesn’t tell the student what to do or how to do it.
• Good readers read closely for evidence about characters and think about what it means.
• This statement includes a specific directions for the student to complete.

You can get the "Good Readers" statements as a part of a free download! Just enter your email address below to get freebies and tips for guided reading.

and for the complete set, including these tools and more, check out my new Rolling Out Guided Reading Pack at TPT! Over 100 pages of planning and instructional tools, organizational tips and binder resources for Guided Reading! (It even includes editable pages for you to work with on your computer!)

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Texas Stuff. Yeehah. Reading Assessment Tracker with TEKS Freebie!

This one's special for Texas. I guess I should say Yee-Hah! Except I don't really like Texas-y stuff. Or cowboys. Or the Dallas Cowboys. Or oil.
I guess I'm not a very good Texan. 

Not only that, I hate
-and this is a big one-
I. Hate. The. STAAR. 
gasp! What? you say. But I hate it.
I know. You're nice. But I'm not. *note: I know you don't love it. That was sarcasm.*
I hate it. I hate it so so so much because it makes me think about that instead of ways to make learning relevant and awesome. I still think about relevance and awesomeness most of the time, but a part of the time, I have to think about STAAR. (They say relevance is a part of it, but you know what I mean. Real relevance and STAAR relevance are different.)
Now, the little people we work with shouldn't worry about the STAAR. That makes me sad that they do. We don't want them thinking that the only way to show what they know is by taking a multiple-choice test and filling in some bubbles. But, on the other hand, they will have to take tests for the rest of their lives, to do pretty much anything they want to do. Fortunately, they'll be adults someday and not little children who we're stifling. But for now, you know, we do what we do.
There's another special thing about Texas. We don't do Common Core. At all. We have our own standards that may or may not align with Common Core. They're the TEKS. And they're not bad, actually, in reading. They're genre-based, which is good.
So I tried to think of a fun way for kids to track their progress towards the student expectations they have to learn. A way that would help them see how they're improving based on specific standards they have to master.
I have worked on these reading assessment trackers until I hate them. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them! But they're so cute that hopefully you'll like them. 
This is what they are:
I took the student expectations for the Texas TEKS that are tested on the STAAR, so I only used the Readiness and Supporting standards. I bundled them by genre and typed them up. Then I added the Figure 19 standards that are tested into each genre that they're tested in. 
I added a place for the kids to record their scores on assessments and a little color code key. Both Enlgish and Spanish are available for grades 3, 4, and 5. But PLEASE check over the Spanish especially. I typed it directly from the TEKS, but it's possible there is an error. If you find one, let me know and I will correct it ASAP. Thank you!

Grab it free at TPT or Teacher's Notebook. I hope you like it and can use it.  And, if you're not from Texas, go back and check out the generic reading assessment graph I made. Maybe you'll be able to use that one! Pin It