Lesson Plan
Text Features: Reading that Makes Sense
Improve your students' comprehension of non-fictional reading through this lesson that teaches them about text features. Students will find their own text features and explain why they aid in the reading process.
Grades:
Subjects:
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Learning Objectives
Students will be able to understand the purpose of text features and how they support readers' comprehension of a text.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Explain to students that text features are the elements of books, newspapers, and magazines that enhance a reader's experience by pointing out important information and making the text simpler to understand.
- Explain the following nonfiction text features with the class: table of contents, index, glossary, titles, headings/subheadings, text (bold, color, italics), bullets, asterisks, pictures, illustrations, captions, side bars, diagrams, maps, tables, and time lines.
- Display an example of each type of text feature and a definition of each. This can be on a digital presention or in an example book.
- Emphasize the importance of each text feature and prompt students to discuss any prior experience they have with these text features.
Beginning
- Ask students to define text features with a partner. Allow them to use their home language (L1) if they choose.
- Provide a student-friendly definition of text features. Give learners a partially completed glossary on which to record examples of text features.
- Provide a word bank for students to use when completing the sentence stems.
Intermediate
- Instruct learners to define text features in their own words and explain why they are important.
- Have students use a word bank of important terms to explain how they used text features to better understand text.
- Display sentence frames for discussion, such as "I have used the ________________ text feature, and it helped _________________."