1. Understanding Informational Text
Essential question: How do I understand informational text?

2. What do I need to know to understand informational text?
A variety of skills and processes are applied for the purpose of evaluating and explaining accuracy and effectiveness of informational texts. Expository and procedural texts provide you to make inferences, summarize, synthesize, and provide textual evidence during your reading.

3. Organizational patterns used in informational text:
Cause and Effect
Chronological Order
Sequential Order
Compare and Contrast
Problem and Solution
Authors vary form and style in order to write for different purposes, audiences, and contexts.

4. Cause and Effect
Cause and effect passages usually focus on explaining the reason why something occurs or occurred, and time will usually not pass in these paragraphs.
Here are some words that may indicate that information in a paragraph is organized as cause and effect: because, as a result, resulted, caused, affected, since, due to, effect.

5. Chronological Order
Nonfiction passages that are organized chronologically often contains dates. Fiction passages or narratives usually have no dates.
ALL stories are told in chronological order or in order of time
Information in each passage is more likely to be organized by the time in which each event occurred
Remember: Chrono = Time Logic = Order

6. Procedural Text/Sequential Order
Sequential order is when information in a passage is organized by the order in which it occurs.
DO NOT confuse sequential order with chronological order! Texts organized chronologically occur at a specific time and setting, whereas texts describing processes or sequences do not occur at any specific time and place.
Examples of sequential order: Instructions on how to bake a cake, directions on how to get to another state, how a president is elected
Sequential order does not occur at any specific time but, rather, anytime.
Signal Words: First, next, before, lastly, then
Example: How to Make Cookies. First, get your materials. Then, make your dough. Lastly, cook your dough at 400 degrees for 10 minutes.
Procedural text – a type of informational text that is written with the intent to explain the steps in the procedure, as in a recipe.

7. Compare and Contrast
A text structure or pattern of organization where the similarities and differences of two or more things are explored.
Signal Words: like, unlike, both, neither, similar, and different.

8. Problem and Solution
a pattern of organization where information in a passage is expressed as a dilemma or concerning issue (a problem) and something that was, can be, or should be done to remedy this issue (solution or attempted solution.)
Signal words- propose, solution, answer, issue, problem, problematic, remedy, prevention, and fix.
Problem: A student is not completing their homework.
Solution: Call home to inform parents that the student is not completing their homework and needs to begin completing their homework and turning it in.

9. Organizational Patterns in Text and the Author
Some texts may have multiple organizational patterns.
Consider the connection between organizational patterns and author’s purpose
How does the organizational pattern connect to the author’s purpose?

10. Complex Inferences about Informational Text
Informational Text (expository, persuasive, embedded procedural text/graphics)
Purpose of informational text
Main idea of whole texts and sections of texts
Details that support the central idea or controlling idea

11. What is the purpose of informational text?
The main purpose of informational texts is to inform or instruct the reader in some way.
Informational text teaches about the natural or social world. It tends to talk about entire classes of things in a generalized way. (“Sharks live in water.”)
There is often specialized or technical vocabulary associated with it and particular text features such as diagrams, charts, tables, photographs or realistic illustrations.

12. What are some features I will find in informational text?
Subtitles – subtitles determine the main idea of sections of text
Facts/Details – support the main idea by telling how, when, what, where, why, how much, and how many
Main idea – the overall message of an entire text or section of a text
Graphical Components- Diagram, Illustration/drawing, Photograph, Map, Chart, Graph, Timeline, Table

13. Subtitles/Graphical Components

14. What is a summary?
Brief, coherent sentences that communicate the key information, ideas, or events in logical order
Main ideas from the beginning, middle, and end

15. What will my semester exam cover?
Nonfiction
Poetry
Fiction
Drama
Informational Text

16. How can I study? Study all of your notes to prepare for your exam:
Drama notes – ex. The Spider Curse
Informational text notes -- ex. Lost in Death Valley
Poetry notes – ex. Annabel Lee
Fiction – ex. The Outsiders
Nonfiction – ex. Crisis at Chipotle