Looking for Text Features

Last week, I received the “Big Ideas” newsletter for December from the Smekens Education website. Kristina Smekens is a 6 + 1 Traits trainer who provides professional development for teachers. Her website biography describes her as “a speaker and author who works with K-12 teachers sharing practical strategies for teaching writing, reading comprehension, and vocabulary development.” I’ve been to a few of Smekens’s workshops, and take useful, practical ideas away from each one.

The suggestion from this month's newsletter that I want to share is about looking for text features in untraditional places. The piece said:

More on Text Features
Students often perceive text features as decoration or filler. They don't read text outside of the gray body paragraphs. However, text features serve a purpose. They are there to provide the reader additional information. It's imperative that students see text features as more than eye candy!
Consider modeling the power of text features with high-interest texts like a page or two from the Guinness Book of World Records or even the front and back sides of sports trading cards. Click here for a sample card with questions that target QAR.
If you want students to actually read the text features, consider only asking questions about the content within them. Have them pull details from text features, or draw conclusions based on facts within the text features. These could make for a great literacy station or a fabulous activity for morning or bell work. We've got to get our students to read text features and glean the information offered within them. These are NOT decorations.

You can subscribe to the Big Ideas newsletter or read old editions of it here.

Or, if you like this idea, Smekens provides an idea library on her website with TONS of ideas that you can easily use.

Comics in the Classroom

Tap Into The World Of Comics

View more presentations from S. Hendy.

This site suggests using comics in the classroom for a variety of purposes. A great graphic (on slide 4) shows that comics can be used to develop several literacy skills including: character development, problem solving, organization, creativity, storytelling, setting, sequencing, decision making, and creativity. If the comic building is done with one of the many online programs or websites available, computer skills are also being developed. After this graphic, links to several comic creators are provided before the best part of the presentation: “21 Ways to Use Comics in the Classroom.”
Several of these suggestions sound like things that kids would love to do. A few of my favorites include:
#1. Instruction Manual: the kids could create their own instruction manuals (which is nonfiction writing with a focus on sequencing!) or the teacher could use the comic as an instruction manual for the student’s task.
#3. Research Assignment: This could definitely tie into nonfiction with both reading and writing. If students need to do research (nonfiction reading) to create a comic, the end product may be worth the less exciting task at hand. (Note: this is not to say that reading nonfiction is not exciting, but many students think that it is, so this could help!)
#5. Convert a Story: There is a large movement in the world of graphic novels right now, and this could be a great opportunity to help students make the connection between novels and comics.
#6. Write a Story: Whether used as the final product or in the planning stages, using comics to write a story could be a fun option for more creative students. It would also be an opportunity to talk about ways that the image can actually tell more of a story than the words.
#14. Using Terminology: The slide show suggests providing students with five words that have to be used in their comics as a way to encourage the students to understand new terminology.