The Everything Guide to Informational Texts, K-2
Best Texts, Best Practices
- Kathy H. Barclay - Western Illinois University, USA
- Laura Stewart - Rowland Reading Foundation
- Deborah M. Lee - Western Illinois University, USA
Foreword by Timothy Shanahan
Corwin Literacy
Content Literacy (K-12) | English/Language Arts Common Core | Reading (Primary/Elementary)
“Do monarch butterflies have a nose?” a kindergartener inquires.
“Does it rain on the moon?” a first-grader wonders.
“Does a white shark really produce 30 million teeth?”asks a second grader.
These incisive, critical quests for additional knowledge about the world are precisely what children do when the Common Core State Standards for informational texts go right in K-2. And with The Everything Guide to Informational Texts, the Common Core will go right in K-2.
Authors Kathy Barclay and Laura Stewart have written the book that teachers like you have been pleading for—a resource that delivers the “what I need to know Monday through Friday” to engage kids in a significant amount of informational text reading experiences.
No filler, no lofty ideals about college and career readiness, but instead, the information on how to find lesson-worthy texts and create developmentally appropriate instructional plans that truly help young readers comprehend grade-level texts.
What you’ll love most:
- The how-to’s on selecting stellar informational texts
- High-impact comprehension strategies for nonfiction
- Suggestions on providing sufficient challenge in guided reading, read alouds, and other practices
- Model text lessons and lesson plan templates across each grade
- An annotated list of 449 informational texts for read alouds, guided reading, and independent reading
It’s time to bring in to our classrooms all the high-quality informational texts that are available. It’s time to demonstrate to students how to read them, and to allow the authors of these children’s texts to take readers into rich, complex ideas they can handle with our support. If ever there were a book to quell our concern about how Common Core expectations will play out in grades K-2, this is it.
“There was a time when a book like this would have set out to try to persuade teachers. But, that’s not the issue anymore. . . . Teachers everywhere are asking themselves, ‘How do I teach with informational texts?’ Kathy Barclay and Laura Stewart provide a rich collection of practical answers to that question. Their book can--through its practical lessons, advice, and guidance--show teachers how to make informational text a joyful reality in the lives of our youngest scholars.”
“Kathy Barclay and Laura Stewart have done a marvelous job of providing teachers with specific suggestions for making the most of informational texts--from choosing the right texts for students, to practical and effective instructional strategies that will help students engage in close reading of these important texts, to an actual lesson format for teaching informational texts. Teaching informational texts can be a challenge for primary grade teachers. The Everything Guide to Informational Texts will help teachers and students meet that challenge!”
“The book is well written, well organized, and teacher friendly. It addresses a topic--the use of informational text with younger students--that has not been sufficiently addressed in guidelines associated with the CCSS. It contains valuable lists of children’s nonfiction texts, annotated and organized by grade level. The suggested lesson format is illustrated concretely with sample lesson plans based on high-quality informational texts.”
“For K-2 teachers eager to select and teach from ‘informational texts of substance,’ Barclay and Stewart offer much guidance. With keen insight, they also direct our pedagogical attention to the oft-overlooked, but tremendously powerful, text complexity essentials--oral language development, read aloud, and shared reading.”
