Considering Informational Texts

1990

Reading Teacher, 2006

The Reading Teacher, 2008

American Educator, 2003

Data from several different sources converge on the point that informational text is scarce in primary-grade classrooms. One such source of data is the analyses of the text genres represented in basal reading series. The proportions we found reported in studies within the last two decades ranged from a high of 33.8 percent factual articles in eight basal reading series for grade 2 (Schmidt, Caul, Byers, & Buchman, 1984) to a low of 12 percent nonfiction in five basal reading series for grade 1 (Hoffman et al., 1994). In the most recent analysis of which we are aware, Moss and Newton (1998) examined six grade-2 basal reading series, copyright 1995 to 1997. They found a mean of 16 percent of selections that could be classified as informational literature.

1994

Reading Teacher, 2005

National Geographic and Hampton Brown Best …, 2010

2016

Nonfiction: texts whose main function is to "communicate information and durable factual content" (Duke, 2000, p. 205). This includes both texts that would be considered literature in the field of children's literature (e.g., picture book biographies, nonfiction children's trade book focused on science, math, etc.) and those that would be considered nonliterary (e.g., dictionaries, encyclopedias, manuals, news articles, textbooks, etc.) Nonfiction literature: texts that meet the definition for nonfiction, but also include elements that lend an artistic or literary quality to the text. Format: speaks to the arrangement or plan of the text, I use this term to refer to the format (e.g., picturebook, longer illustrated book, etc.) of the text. Structure: speaks to the arrangement of the text in the literature (e.g., narrative or expository) of the text. Structures of nonfiction texts Nonfiction picturebook: a nonfiction text that is around 32-48 pages in length, "in which the story depends on the interaction between written text and images." (Arizpe & Styles, 2003, p. 22) Nonfiction illustrated book: a longer nonfiction picturebook that includes a large amount of text and for which the illustrations support the content, but are not integral to content being shared. In a nonfiction illustrated book, the text can stand alone. Non-or minimally-illustrated longer nonfiction text [parallel to the fictional novel]: a nonfiction text that communicates the information using texts; images (if included) are marginal. Autobiography: narrative nonfiction texts that are accounts of the author's life. Memoir: narrative nonfiction texts that are accounts of the author's life. These texts focus on the way the author remembers events and emotions rather than on the facts. Memoirs tend to focus on memories about a specific event or time frame of the author's life. Narrative nonfiction histories: narrative nonfiction texts that communicate histories of people, places, and events in a narrative style.