Chapter 10: Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection

Students are constantly asked to determine the  main idea, highlight details, and read for specific information.  This is a difficult task for many students because they have not been taught strategies to help them determine important information when reading nonfiction text.  Furthermore, many students do not have exposure to non-fiction books to become familiar with the text structure and information found in them. Harvey and Goudvis (2007) remember having many books read aloud to them in school yet "can never recall having had a piece of nonfiction read aloud  or even seeing it in school" (page 156).  They go on to say "It was as if the genre didn't exist" (page 156).   I believe many people would agree with those statements which is alarming!  Students need to have exposure with informational texts in order to have opportunities to respond to them.  Otherwise, students become frustrated and confused when trying to apply strategies to nonfiction texts.

There are many strategies to help students determine important information in text such as scanning the text before they read, highlighting important words and facts, writing notes as they read, and paying attention to illustrations and text structure.  In order for students to become familiar with locating important information, teachers need to model this and provide opportunities for students to practice.  This is a skill students will need to be successful on end of grade assessments and all through life so it is critical for this instruction to begin as early as Kindergarten.  

 Here are a few strategies that will help teachers guide students to be better equipped with determining the importance the text they are reading:

Building Background Knowledge of Nonfiction Features (p.159)
This strategy is a great to being awareness to nonfiction features and scaffold the ability to note the purpose of nonfiction features.  You will need a wide variety of nonfiction texts in the classroom for read alouds and independent reading, in addition to 8x11 sheets of paper.  
Students will create little booklets from the paper folded over and stapled together with construction paper for the cover.  Each time the teacher reads a nonfiction book, she will select a feature to let the students add to their booklet.  Once this has been done several times, students will then be able to add features that they find during their independent reading.


Making Students Aware of Primary Sources (.p.164)
This strategy is to help students become more adapt to noticing primary sources and learning from them.  When teachers introduce students to nonfiction features, they share their purposes, what to notice, think about, so naturally they need to do the same for primary sources .  Teachers need to point them out, talk about them, and discuss how they relate to and enhance the narrative (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p.165).  The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, by Louise Borden is an excellent book to being this journey with.  This book helps to inform the reader that primary sources help to give a reader a sense of history, inform them about specific content (without being altered) and to help breathe life into a time period.  Once the teacher has shared the book with the class, encourage students to find other books that are primary sources and discuss what makes them a great resource to use.


Finding Important Information Rather Than Just One Main Idea (p.166)
Throughout a piece of text, there may be several important ideas, rather than a single main idea.  Getting young readers to shift their thinking from finding the "main idea" and finding several important ideas can start with three sticky notes labeled with a *.  First the teacher will give the class a common text and ask them to label 3 places in the text they think is important.  Then the teacher will model this process by reading a book and noting her main ideas.  Naturally, no one will have the exact places they deemed important, so students are guided into citing evidence and explaining their thinking to help defend their choices.  By having students do this, they gradually learn that nonfiction texts may have several important ideas as opposed to one main idea.


Important to Whom? (p.167)
This strategy can be easily adapted to fit any lesson or content being discussed due to the fact you can use any article from magazines such as Time for Kids, Scholastic News, National Geographic Explorer or any nonfiction trade book.  Teachers need to ask students to make a distinction ebtween what they think is most important and what the writer wants them to take away from the article.  In order to do that have students, 
1. Write down something they learned that they think is important to remember.
2. Draw a line under that response and with down what  they think the author most wanted them to learn and remember.
Sometimes the response will be the same, other times the response is very different.  It is key to help students now that nonfiction writers have something in mind that they are trying to to convey to the reader and that it is the readers' responsibility to pick up on that as well (Harvey & Goudvis, 2007, p.167).  
This is a great strategy to point out that when taking a standardized test, they should keep in mind that the right answer reflects what the author wanted them to keep in mind (what was the writer's big idea versus what they think is most important).