Informational Text Reading Strategies: Previewing A Text

Informational Texts

Informational texts provide unique opportunities for students to learn important reading strategies. These strategies can help them understand and use the information effectively, and increase their reading skills overall.

Previewing a text can help students identify important features.  Since every text is different, it is important to demonstrate where to find the useful features and how to use them as they read.

How to Introduce Text Features

• Chose a text that has a variety of features including: index, table of contents, diagrams, summaries, text box.
• Demonstrate each part of the text and identify what information the students can find in each section.
• Ask students questions that require them to find information and clues from the text on display.
• Provide students with the opportunity to search a text on their own to practice identifying the parts of the text that will be useful before they read.
• Optional- give students a worksheet with specific questions to answer independently about the text.

Suggested Prompts for Searching the Text

Depending on grade, reading level, and individual student abilities, the prompting questions can be created to fit the needs of the student.  Questions can range from simple fill-in the blank, to more complex analysis of the information.

Some examples for searching the index include:

• The index is on page _______.
• On what page would you find (fill in the subject)?
• What does the index tell the reader?
• How is the index arranged?
• Why is the index useful in this text?
• How might the index help the reader understand the text better?

Since informational text is very different from fiction, students need explicit instruction on how to navigate through the material.  Students may not know that the illustrations and diagrams give important information that the reader needs along the way.  They may also need to be shown the text boxes that contain key vocabulary words and facts.

Previewing the text allows students to become familiar with the layout of the text, practice making predictions, and identify the unique characteristics of the text.  As students progress through the grades, the complexity of informational texts in the classroom increases.  When students have a strong working knowledge of the features and how to use them, they can easily incorporate new components into their reading strategies.

Students Share What They Learned

Once students have completed the activity, bring the whole class together to share what they learned.  Ask students to identify features of the text that they found and how it is useful to the reader.

Students could also work in small groups to compare and share what they learned through the activity.

Choosing Texts With Big Universe Learning

Big Universe Learning has a huge selection of non-fiction and informational texts for students arranged by subject, grade level, reading level, language, and other convenient categories.

Some of the CCSS addressed in this article include:

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.5 Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently.