What is informational text? Common Core uses “informational text” as another term for “nonfiction text.”  This category includes historical, scientific, and technical texts that provide students with factual information about the world. Typically, they employ structures such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, and problem and solution. They also contain text features like headlines and boldface vocabulary words.  Because of their narrative structures, biographies and autobiographies do not look like other nonfiction texts. In fact, they are often classified as literary nonfiction. But the Common Core considers them to be informational text as well.  Another category of informational texts includes directions, forms, and information contained in charts, graphs, maps, and digital resources. Simply put, if students are reading it for the information it contains, it’s informational text. 

Putting It Into Practice  With an understanding of what the standards are calling for, it’s time to start thinking about what instruction in informational text could look like in your classroom. Here are a few ideas.

. The phrase “academic and domain-specific vocabulary,” which appears several times, refers to words readers often encounter in textbooks across all subject areas.

A recent post focused on connecting the trait of Ideas with the Common Core. This time around, we’ll look at Organization: ordering ideas to make them both clear and interesting. We’ll define the trait, link it to the CCSS for writing, and suggest favorite books to use as mentor texts in teaching important elements of Organization—including leads, endings, and transitions.

argument writing must present a strong claim and support that claim with “sufficient evidence” and relevant “valid reasoning.”

First, select a high interest topic.

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