 Hi I'm Steph Wannick. Thanks for joining me to learn more about expository text structures and elements of reading webinar. Why should we teach text structures? Well understanding the organization of a text makes it easier to comprehend that text. If we have a sequencing text structure we'll know that things are going to happen in order. If we're looking at a cause and effect and we know that we see a major cause of something happening, we'll know to look for that effect. It helps train our brain to look for certain elements that are common within the text structure. So what are text structures? They are those organizational patterns that we see in text. Examples of these are description, sequence, problem and solution, cause and effect, compare and contrast. Now these are the most basic common text structures that you come across. Many sources that you'll find online in different places might call them by different names or even break them down into different pieces but these are ones that are very common that you'll see many places. So how can text structures be incorporated into a close reading lesson? Well we're going to help use these to help us understand that text at a deeper level and that's what close reading is all about. Getting kids to dig deep into their text, use evidence to support claims and really understand the text better. Oftentimes our close reading lessons are divided into three reads. So on the first read we're really focusing on what does the text say? These are very literal questions about the text and in most cases you won't focus on text structures yet in the first read. In the first read you're really going to hit questions about who, what, why, when, where and how and oftentimes we call those write their questions that kids can point to right in their text. It's blatantly said. Now in the second read we focus on what how does the text work and this includes authors craft, word choice, vocabulary and now we hit those organizational patterns. When we dig a little bit deeper we can start to think about the text structure. So some example questions might be what text structure was used in this piece and now this next question is really important. What evidence or signal words show that that is the text structure? So we want kids to go back into their text, find that evidence, find those those words that signal hey this is the text structure that we're talking about and in close reading we always want kids going back to the text and finding that evidence and even the question why would an author have used this text structure? Why would an author choose to use a sequence? Why would an author try choose to use a problem and solution here? What does that help them convey? And then in the third read we really get to that deep level of thought and we talk about what does the text mean. Here we want to ask questions that require that use of evidence again to synthesize now and infer. We are now getting to those very high levels of thought. So you might ask questions like how would the text change if it was written in a comparing contrast text structure instead of descriptive? Okay so we take a descriptive piece and turn it around. What would it look like? What would it how would it be different? What words would be different? What purpose would be different there? Another question that we might ask is based on the text structure what can we infer about the author's purpose? Okay so right here we don't exactly know the author's purpose but hey they chose to use a compare and contrast text structure here. So what are they wanting us to know? Why did they write it in this way? Or they told the problem and solution here and so was it to highlight that problem and really want it to emphasize that there is a problem going on in the world and we need this solution to solve it? So we really have kids thinking hard about questions that aren't answered within the text. Now this nice chart here can be used within your classroom. It lists a definition, signal words, graphic organizers for each text structure and I really want to highlight the use of these graphic organizers. They can help kids understand that text at the deeper level so use them within your close reads. Have them work with groups to work on these graphic organizers and I like that each is slightly different for each text structure to really help kids understand the structure better. There are some summary questions that you can embed within your close reading lesson as well as paragraph frames that will help kids as they translate the text structures to their own writing. You can get them started with their own writing using these paragraph frames. Thanks to these sources for some help on my presentation today and thank you for tuning in. Please contact me with any text structure questions as well as any other questions about reading and close reading in particular. Thank you.