WEBVTT

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[Music]

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I'm Tracy Propes from
Woodbridge Elementary School.

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I'm the reading coach
for second-

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and third-grade teachers.

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Text structure is really
important for kids,

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because I think it gives
them a purpose for reading.

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It enables them to know
how text is organized,

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and they then know how
to attack that text.

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I think they're very familiar
with a narrative text,

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where they are used to seeing
the characters and the setting,

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a problem and a solution.

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But oftentimes, they
are not as familiar

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with an expository text, and I
think we need to teach them how

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that text is organized so that
they can take larger chunks

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of reading that they've done
and break it down into smaller,

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more manageable chunks.

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Sometimes the kids see this
text, and they blank out.

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They don't know how
to break it apart.

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They don't understand that it's
organized in a different way.

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With an informational
text, expository text,

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they are supposed to gather some
kind of information from that.

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There are many tools that can
be used to teach text structure,

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but I truly believe the
most important goes back

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to the teacher and knowing
what's happening in their mind

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and what they're thinking.

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and the tool that they can give

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to the students is the
way they think aloud

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and modeling good
thinking strategies

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and good reading strategies.

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That's most important.

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But I also think there are some
other tools that we can use

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as teachers to pass
on to the students.

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Our focus this year has
been on graphic organizers.

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Even in kindergarten,
they started

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with the teacher
modeling the Venn diagram.

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and because they were
familiar with that,

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a teacher in third grade
actually took that idea

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and took it to the next step,
and she made a foldable,

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which--basically, she just
folded a sheet of paper over,

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drew a Venn diagram
on the outside.

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And if you flip up
the first flap,

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that's where you would put a
difference, and on the outside,

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there are the other
differences just

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like the two sides
of the Venn diagram.

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and in the center is where
you would put the similarities

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or the likenesses.

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The biggest challenge
to teachers

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for teaching text structure is

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that they didn't have the
resources available before.

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But now that they
have those resources--

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when we first started this,
they were very concerned

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that it would be too difficult
for the kids, but they found

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that once they started
teaching the text structure,

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and they truly could understand,
even in kindergarten.

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So I think the biggest
struggle was more

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with the teacher teaching it

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and not thinking the kids
would be ready for it.

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But once they began teaching,
they knew that they had the kids

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and they were excited about it.

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[Music]