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Text Structures and Fables
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Text Structures and Fables
Teaching Students to Write About What They Read, Grades 3-12

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February 2023 | 200 pages | Corwin

State tests are assessing reading and writing together—Are you ready?

I wish students would interact with a text on their own…I wish it wasn’t like pulling teeth to get them to elaborate their thinking. Wish no more, because bestselling author Gretchen Bernabei shows you how to guide students to be nimble at both short answer and extended responses. Her secret? “Teach students text structures, and they can pour their swirling ideas about the text into cogent writing.”

Using the accessible format of fables, Bernabei and Hover share lessons and an appendix full of fables so you can teach students five concrete ways to respond to text in any genre:

  1. Generate basic responses, using structures that support clarity
  2. Craft fiction inspired by the text to unveil literary knowledge and imaginative response
  3. Write essays about a theme or moral that display empathic and evidence-based interpretation
  4. Answer open-ended questions by selecting a technique that reflects the text and their engagement
  5. Use non-traditional formats like graphics and spoken dialogue to showcase their learning

The heat is on—beginning in third grade, state tests are now assessing reading and writing together. And that’s a good thing, but we’ve got some catching up to do. With Text Structures and Fables in hand, your students will swiftly and surely become text-savvy readers and writers.

 
PART I. BUILDING STRONG READERS AND WRITERS
 
LESSON 1. RESPONDING TO READING
 
LESSON 2. WRITING FICTION FOR READERS
 
LESSON 3. WRITING ESSAYS ABOUT THE MORAL
 
FABLE THEMES 1–10
 
PART II. ASSESSING STRONG READERS AND WRITERS
 
LESSON 4. WRITING ANSWERS TO COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
 
LESSON 5. WRITING ANSWERS ABOUT THE AUTHOR’S CRAFT
 
FABLE THEMES 11–20
 
PART III. USING NONTRADITIONAL FORMATS
 
LESSON 6. THE QA12345 DIALOGUE
 
LESSON 7. INFOSHOT (CUBING): SHOW WHAT YOU KNOW
 
LESSON 8. BA-DA-BING
 
LESSON 9. THREE-THINGS RESPONSE
 
LESSON 10. ONE-LINERS
 
FABLE THEMES 21–30

Supplements

“These lessons help! When students have a choice, it allows them to answer a question based on the information that they know, and not based on what they think a teacher wants to hear.”

Ida Ferrazzano
Grade 5 Teacher, United ISD, Laredo, Texas

“What is beautiful about using these text structures to respond to text is that students go back into the text to support their thinking.  This is what we want.  We sat them to support their responses with evidence from the text. This makes it easy.”

Malene Golding
Education Consultant and Adjunct Professor at University of Houston - Clear Lake

“The results of using text structures?  Miraculous!”

Sheryl Stewart
Grade 9 Teacher, A&M Consolidated High School

“One of the things I appreciate most is that these lessons will prepare students for the tests without the typical test-prep materials.”

Dawn Lyssy
Director of Elementary Instruction, Pearland ISD

Sample Materials & Chapters

Sample Text


For instructors

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ISBN: 9781071894248
£30.99