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The purpose of this "teaching tips" article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and after writing. Embedded within such instruction is the use of inquiry listening as a form of formative assessment. The article opens by highlighting a problem posed by a local literacy assessment and standardized test preparation measure for the focal children, namely, inconsistencies between the text structure analyzed (narrative) and the required product (expository textual analysis). Next, it outlines specific instruction involving interactive discussions that lead to comprehension of text structure(s) and clear conceptualizations of expected formats for written products. These include a) frontloading with photographs, and b) thinking aloud about writing samples.

The purpose of this article is to describe the assessment-driven instruction that facilitated third graders' increased understanding of informational texts, as revealed in their written responses to texts during one school year. The key instructional practices included making transparent for students what it means to synthesize, engaging students in interactive read-alouds, assessing students' written responses regularly, and using what was learned from the assessments to develop think-aloud minilessons. The article includes analysis of students' written responses throughout the school year. The authors reveal how the majority of the students grew in their ability to synthesize the ideas relevant to the overall meaning of the text and to develop their thinking using details from the text. (Contains 4 figures.)

The purpose of this 'teaching tips' article is to describe practical classroom instruction that helps elementary students write expository responses to narrative texts. It focuses on the importance of scaffolded, interactive discussions comprised of a combination of teacher think alouds and similar student responses before, during, and after writing. Embedded within such instruction is the use of inquiry listening as a form of formative assessment. The article opens by highlighting a problem posed by a local literacy assessment and standardized test preparation measure for the focal children, namely, inconsistencies between the text structure analyzed (narrative) and the required product (expository textual analysis). Next, it outlines specific instruction involving interactive discussions that lead to comprehension of text structure(s) and clear conceptualizations of expected formats for written products. These include a) frontloading with photographs, and b) thinking aloud about writing samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how oral reading can help students to better comprehend complex informational texts and also considers assessment-driven instruction. The study was conducted in a third-grade classroom and used assessments to test the reading comprehension of reading materials that students read independently and out loud. It is important, it is noted, to be able to synthesize information while reading and an explanation of synthesis is presented. The benefits to students of oral reading include increasing their comprehension, improvement of their independent reading, and increases in their prior learning in particular content areas.