1. Informational Text Elements
Informational Text Elements - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Informational Text Elements

2. Date: January 20, Topic: Frederick Douglass Skills EQ: How can understanding text elements and figurative language help me better comprehend what I read?

3. Video Notes
Informational Text Elements: Details, events, people, and ideas
Informational Texts
Might try to explain, persuade, or tell a true story
Individuals, ideas, or events will interact and develop over the course of a text
Watch Define Video – 1:56

4. Define Informational Text:
presents readers with information or ideas about real people, places, things, and events
Provides facts and details related to historical, scientific, and cultural topics
Might try to persuade you to accept a specific point of view about a subject
Types of Informational Text
Biography, diary, interview, article, report, advertisement, letter, editorial, essay, proposal, and speech
The main elements of the text will vary depending on which type of informational text a writer chooses
A news article may only present facts and details
A travel essay would provide opinions of a traveling experience

5. Identification and Application
Look for key details in the text that describe or explain important ideas, events, or individuals
Analyze how the text makes connections as well as distinctions among individuals, ideas, or events in a text
Classify and categorize facts and details to determine similarities and differences between types of information in a text
Identify an author’s use of short amusing or serious stories that make readers laugh or ponder over a topic

6. Model Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Autobiography: a written account of the life of a person written by that person
Facts, details, and that author’s ideas about life are crucial to the text
Douglass uses an anecdote of how he learned to read and how that connected to how saw slavery

7. Figurative Language - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

8. Video Notes
Figurative Language: takes words beyond their literal meaning
Includes figures of speech such as: similes, metaphors, and idioms
Additional figures of speech include: allusion, personification, onomatopoeia, and puns
Adds color and interest to a story by painting a picture
Can help readers understand a strong emotion in a more understandable language
Watch Define Vide – 1:59

9. Define Figurative Language
Writers use this language to produces images in readers’ minds and to express ideas in vivid ways
Uses comparison or exaggeration to make a point and to help readers image something in an expected way
Commonly used in poetry, but can be used in both fiction and nonfiction

10. Identification and Application
Personification: gives human qualities to something that isn’t human
Similes: compare unlike things using “like” or “as”
Metaphors: compare unlike things without using “like” or “as”
Idioms: phrases that imply something different from their literal meaning
Analogies: an author creates a likeness between two things that are otherwise unlike, such as gills on a fish and lungs on a mammal
Allusion: a brief reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance
To understand figurative language, examine the context in which the word or phrase appears and make an educated guess about its implied meaning
Watch the Model Video – 3:59