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English Companion: Reading Expository Text
Taken from "Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techmiques," the information on this website provides advice on how to read, understand, analyze, and write expository texts.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Using Narrative for Expository Text
Lesson in which students read various narrative texts which provide a context for them to learn content-area topics. Narratives allow the students to begin to understand expository texts.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Synthesize Ideas in Informational/expository Text
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to synthesize and make logical connections between ideas within a text and across two or three texts representing similar or different genres and support with...
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Guiding Students: Expository Text With Text Feature Walks
Explains how to guide students in examining text features during a walkthrough of an expository text.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Synthesize Ideas in Informational/expository Texts
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to synthesize and make logical connections between ideas within a text and across two or three texts representing similar or different genres (including literary...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Summarize Informational/expository Text (English 7 Reading)
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to evaluate a summary of the original text for accuracy of the main ideas, supporting details, and overall meaning.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Summarize Informational/expository Text (English 6 Reading)
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to summarize the main ideas and supporting details in text and understand that a summary does not include opinions.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Synthesize Ideas in Informational/expository Text
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Learn how to synthesize and make logical connections between ideas within a text and across two or three texts representing similar or different genres and to support the...
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Make Inferences in Informational/expository Texts
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] Use different organizational patterns as guides for summarizing and forming an overview of different kinds of expository text while distinguishing factual claims from...
Cengage Learning
National Geographic: Informational Text and Young Children [Pdf]
Research-based informative article on when, why and how to introduce and teach reading skills with informational texts to early-elementary students beginning as early as kindergarten.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: How to Read and Analyze an Essay (English Iii Reading)
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson's activities, you will determine the purpose of description, narration, and exposition essays, analyze their literary devices, and examine text features. You...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Get the Gist: A Summarizing Strategy for Any Content Area
A five-part standards-based lesson in which middle schoolers learn to write a 20 word summary of an informational text by focusing on answering the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. This strategy can be applied to any...
Harvard University
Harvard College Writing Center: How to Do a Close Reading
A brief explanation of the tasks involved in doing a close reading in preparation for writing. This writer breaks the process into three steps which involve annotating the text, looking for patterns, and asking questions of the text.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Explain the Controlling Idea, Purpose, and Distinguish Details
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, students will learn how to pinpoint the controlling idea, which not only identifies the main idea, but also answers questions about the author's goal or...
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Changing the Ecosystem: Q & a [Pdf]
"Changing the Ecosystem: Q & A" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage about how the loss of the prairie to farming and population growth impacts the ecosystem. It is followed by questions which require students to provide...
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Prairie Ecology Questions and Activities [Pdf]
"Prairie Ecology Questions and Activities" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage about prairie ecology the interdependence of its plants and animals. It is followed by questions which require students to provide evidence from the...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Everglades
In this video segment from WILD TV, a scientist in the Florida Everglades talks about her research on the pig frog. [6:25]
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Fire Cloud
Firefighters fight a raging fire on a wild horse range in Montana in this video segment from Nature.
Texas Education Agency
Texas Gateway: Analyze Use of Stylistic a Rhetorical Details
[Accessible by TX Educators. Free Registration/Login Required] In this lesson, you are going to learn to comment on writing composed by writers who are aesthetic types, writers who use language to bring images to our minds as we read....
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Chicago Changes [Pdf]
"Chicago Changes" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage about how Chicago changed from a small town to a large city. It is followed by questions which require students to provide evidence from the story; it includes: determining...
Education Place
Houghton Mifflin: Eduplace: 5 Ws Chart [Pdf]
This site from Houghton Mifflin Company provides a simple, reproducible chart to help students gather details of Who, What, When, Where, and Why. This could be used as a reading comprehension tool, or as prewriting for expository writing.
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Why Is Community Service Important? [Pdf]
"Why is Community Service Important?" is a one page, nonfiction, reading passage is part of a report that the Obama-Biden campaign prepared about service and volunteering. It is followed by questions which require students to provide...
Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: New Leadership [Pdf]
"New Leadership" is Harold Washington's Acceptance Speech as Mayor of Chicago on April 12, 1983. It is followed by an assignment which requires students to provide evidence from the text; it includes comparing Washington's election as...