Determining Importance

Book List for Determining Importance

The Old Woman Who Named Things by Cynthia Rylant

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes

The Big Green Pocketbook by Candice Ransom

Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox

Rudi’s Pond by Eve Bunting

The Gardener by Sarah Stewart

Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens

The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco

The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flournoy

The Empty Pot by Demi

Several non-fiction books

 Determining Importance in Nonfiction

Anchor Chart of Tips for Reading Nonfiction

 Think of facts, questions and responses. Write these down as you read.
 Reading nonfiction takes time. You may have to reread to make sure you
understand.
 Reread so you don’t forget what you are reading.
 Reading fiction is like watching a movie. Nonfiction is more like a newscast
or watching a slide show.
 Stop often and ask yourself if what you are reading makes sense.
 Important to abbreviate when you take notes.
 Think before you write.
 Nonfiction reading is reading to learn something.

Determining Importance Tips from

Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller

Determining Importance at a Glance

What’s Key for Kids

 Readers distinguish the differences between fiction and nonfiction.

 Readers distinguish important from unimportant information in order to
identify key ideas or themes as they read.
 Readers use their knowledge of narrative and expository text features to
make predictions about text organization and content.
 Readers utilize text features to help them distinguish important from
unimportant information.
 Readers use their knowledge of important and relevant parts of text to
answer questions and synthesize text for themselves and others.
Determining Importance Tips from
Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey

Chapter 9 Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection

{Throughout Stephanie’s education, teachers had instructed her to highlight

the important parts. But no one had shown her how. She assumed that if
the writers of these massive textbooks had written it down, it must be
important. So she highlighted just about every letter of print. Highlighting is
easy; determining what to highlight is the challenge (page 117).|

Stephanie Harvey writes, {Determining Importance means picking out the most
important information when you read, to highlight essential ideas, to isolate
supporting details, and to read for specific information. Teachers need to
help readers sift and sort information, and make decisions about what
information they need to remember and what information they can disregard
(page 117).|

{Readers of nonfiction have to decide and remember what is important in the

texts they read if they are going to learn anything from them. (page 118)|

Debbie Miller says, {We must teach our students what nonfiction is. Teaching
our students that expository text has predictable characteristics and
features they can count on before they read allows them to construct
meaning more easily as they read.|

 Nonfiction books are organized around specific topics and main ideas
 Nonfiction books give you information that is true.
 Nonfiction books try to teach you something.
 When readers read nonfiction books they make predictions about the kinds
of things they expect to learn. They activate their schema and the topic
and what they know about the type of text they are about to read.
 Nonfiction books have features
 FQR Chart
Facts-Question-Response Chart
The strategy emphasis supports students to ask questions, determine
importance in the text, and respond, voicing their own opinions and thoughts.
Eventually the children will be able to use this response method independently
to read for information in text they have chosen at their own reading level.
The children record factual information, ask questions, and respond to merge
their thinking with the content.

When students have the opportunity to share and explain their own thinking
about text, they learn and remember important information.

Example: {The Comeback of Humpbacks| National Geographic for Kids (Sept 2000)

Facts Question Response

Leaping out of the Is all jumping called

water is called breaching?
breaching

30x more than in WOW! That is a lot. That was a

1965 good comeback.

Humpbacks were I don’t like the hunters using only

almost gone until a one part of the whale.
law was created to
Reminds me of the white men
protect humpbacks
wasting the buffalo.

Reading with Meaning, pages 149-150

Identify what the conventions of nonfiction text are and how they help us
as readers. Debbie Miller suggests spending one day on each convention.
The teacher should bring in examples of at least five places in nonfiction
texts that support that convention. Then the children look for the
convention and share them with a partner, small group, whole group. It is
not enough to identify the convention and purpose, we must also identify
how they help us as readers.
Conventions Purpose How they help
us as readers
Labels Help the reader identify a
picture or photograph and/or
its parts.
Photographs Help the reader understand
exactly what something looks
like.
Captions Help the reader better
understand a picture or
photograph.
Comparisons Help the reader understand
the size of one thing by
comparing it to the size of
something familiar.
Cutaways Help the reader understand
something by looking at it
from the inside.
Maps Help the reader understand
where things are in the
world.
Types of print Help the reader by signaling,
{Look at me! I’m important!|
Close-Ups Help the reader see details in
something small.
Table of Contents Help the reader identify key
topics in the book in the
order they are presented.
Index An alphabetical list of almost
everything covered in the
text, with page numbers.
Glossary Helps the reader define
words contained in the text.

List of mini lessons for nonfiction texts

 Scanning
 Skimming
 Accessing the text through the index
 Using headings and signposts to the information we want
 Strolling through the pictures in order to orientate ourselves to the
text
 Not reading the text in order
 Accessing the text through the table of contents
 Reading the picture captions
 Activating prior knowledge or schema
 Noting characteristics of text length and structure
 Noting what type of organizational pattern the text is using
 Determining what to read in what order
 Determining what to pay careful attention to
 Determining what to ignore
 Deciding to quit because the text contains no relevant information
 Deciding if text is worth careful reading or just skimming
 Pay attention to surprising information. It might mean you are learning
something new.

Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way, pages 58-62 {What’s for Reading<|
{You want the children in your classroom to know that they will read
something every day during Guided Reading, and as Guided Reading time
approaches, you want them to begin asking themselves {What’s for reading<|
Then you want them to know they can take a quick peek at the text and
see the kinds of reading they can anticipate. {What’s for reading<| is a
previewing technique where the children decide what kind of text they are
going to read and what special features that text has.|

Reading With Meaning, page 146

Have the students look at nonfiction and fiction texts and determine what
are the characteristics of both types of text.

Make a Venn Diagram reflecting what they learned.

FICTION BOTH NONFICTION

Title Bold print

Beginning middle end Index

Setting Illustrations

Characters Table of contents

 Problem They help you learn

Events Photographs

Resolution They are fun to

read
Captions

Stories Headings
Words
Cutaways

Themes

Information

Pictures Ideas

Read from front to Amazing facts

back
Read in any order

Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller (Pages 150-151)

Wonder Boxes - Throughout the study of questioning and nonfiction, ask

the children to place a wonder card or two in a basket. Two or three days
a week, draw one out and search for the answer. Another option is to
generate wonder questions and have the students choose one, then do
research for the answer.

Debbie Miller shows them how to think aloud about certain questions:

 What do I already know about the topic?

 What type of book or other source will help me best?
 Where will I find the information?
 How is the information organized in the source? How will I go about
locating what I need?
 Wonder Question

What I learned…

Source:

After looking through the source of information ask yourself, {What did I
learn? How can I synthesize my learning for myself and others?

Strategies That Work, pages 134-137

Sifting the Topic from the Details

Topic and details form is effective in allowing for the students to list
essential information but lacked a place for their responses. The third
column for response allows kids to interact with text personally and ensures
that they have a place to record their thoughts, feelings, and questions.

Three Column Notes

Topic Detail Personal Response

Determining Importance in
Non- Fiction Mini- Lessons
Based on Debbie Miller’s Reading With Meaning

Materials Needed: Non-fiction texts about Dinosaurs, Flight, Reptiles, Biographies,

Animals, Cars and Trucks, Magazines, Field Guides, First Discovery Books,
Newspapers, Maps and Atlases, Big Cats, Disasters, and more.

Anchor Charts:

My Wonderings (Day 1)

T Chart-Nonfiction is not…./Non fiction is….. (Day 2)

T Chart-I predict /
_What’s the thinking behind my prediction< (Day 3&4)

Venn Diagram-Fiction/Nonfiction (Day 5) (pg. 146)

Words that Signal I’m Learning Something New

What do we know about nonfiction conventions?

Background Information:

If you have not already spent time learning how readers identify key themes
in stories, make predictions about the stories’ organization, sequence,
content and characters, then take a day review how readers use features
of fiction to distinguish important from unimportant information in stories. Do
not assume that just because children know how to read and understand
fiction that they can read and understand informational books, too. In these
mini-lessons, you will explicitly teach them the difference.
Week 1: Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Day 1

Lay out a sea of nonfiction books about snakes, dolphins, gemstones, sharks,
kittens, puppies, wolves, the ocean, shipwrecks, the human body, flowers,
space, earthquakes, astronauts, cowboys, ballerinas, dinosaurs, soccer, Tiger
Woods, volcanoes, bugs, and big trucks for free exploration and for
something to build on when explicit teaching begins. Capitalize on their
questions, and have them record them on index cards. Either use individuals
Wonder Boxes, or Wonder Envelopes or a class Wonder Jar. You may model
how you {skim| through the books to generate a few questions of your own.
{Why are some twisters small and other’s big<| {How do wolves catch elk<|
{Why is the sky blue<| {Why do dogs have wet noses<| Wrap up this lesson
by explaining that one of the main differences between fiction and non-fiction,
is that non-fiction books give us information that is true.

Day 2

Using the text, Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say, ask {What type of text
do you predict this is<| (Fiction) {Knowing that it’s fiction, how might you
expect the story to be organized<| Listen for: beginning, middle, end, setting,
characters, a problem, events connected to the problem, and a resolution.
Ask children to make some predictions about what the story is going to be
about. {Just as with narrative text, expository text has predictable
characteristics and features you can count on before you read which allows
you to construct meaning more easily as you read.| Now hold up, Bugs! Bugs!
Bugs! by Jennifer Dussling. {What do you notice about this text<| Compliment
them on noticing that this kind of text is organized differently that fiction.
Tell them {you won’t find characters, problems, or resolutions either. Instead,
these kinds of books—you already know them as nonfiction—are organized
around specific topics and main ideas, and they try to teach you something.
Nonfiction writing gives you information that is true. Let’s read it and see
what we can learn…|
Day 3

Talk with children about how they can use what they know about this type
of text to make predictions about its content—what the text might teach
them. Use prior knowledge of fiction story features and fiction content to
teach children to make expectations of nonfiction texts as well. {When
readers read nonfiction, they make predictions about the text, too. But they
don’t make predictions about the kinds of things they will expect to happen,
they make predictions about the kinds of kinds things they expect to learn.
Use a book about spiders to teach children that when reading nonfiction they
will activate their schema and background knowledge to make predictions about
what they’ll learn in nonfiction text and what they know about the type of
text they are about to read.

Day 4

Using two or three other nonfiction texts, make predictions about each
story will teach you based on your schema and what you know already, and
what’s in your mental files about that topic. {I’m predicting that this story
will be about different types of bats in the world, and that maybe I’ll learn
where they live, what they eat, their life cycles, and even which ones are
dangerous to humans. { Features to point out would be the title, the
photographs on the cover, the table of contents, the headings, the index,
explaining how these features help me make predictions about the text. Do
the same with one other book.

Day 5

Ask the students to help you make predictions. Release responsibility by:

 Asking children to bring a nonfiction book they haven’t read to the rug,
E2E, K2K with a partner, make predictions about what they expect to
learn
 Spreading fiction and nonfiction materials out on the rug, with a
partner, get two or three ask themselves, {Is this fiction or
nonfiction and how do we know<|
  Asking children to bring a nonfiction book and a fiction book to the rug,
get into pairs and create a Venn Diagram that shows the two books’
differences and similarities.

We then create one large diagram that combines everyone’s thinking.

Week 2: Conventions Notebooks

Day 6

Begin the lesson by sharing an interesting article from National Geographic or

a book about sharks. Think aloud and share inner voice comments as you
read. After reading the interesting facts, verbalize comments such as
{Wow!|…. {That’s amazing!… {I never knew that!|… {And get this….|…. {I didn’t know
that either.| The point of this lesson is to listen to your inner voice (and
outer voice) …these words signal you’re learning something new. Let students
try it as they want to discover their inner voice, too. Record the words
that help them recognize they’re learning something new on chart paper.
Optional: Record new learning on sticky notes as NL an then just writer the
most important part.

Day 7

Today you will begin Convention Notebooks (CN). For the next 15 days, you will
focus on a different feature of nonfiction text. By focusing on teaching the
features, the children will determine importance and construct meaning by
paying close attention to features such as photographs, diagrams, captions,
and comparisons. Each day you will explicitly teach them what nonfiction
conventions are, what kinds of information these conventions give us, and
how they help us determine what is important in a text. CN will have 12
pieces of blank white paper and you can use the provided cover on cardstock
or students may create their own cover with hand printed title with
construction paper front and back cover. Today students will get CN and add
title. Begin with Comparisons. Search your nonfiction library for 5 or 6 books
that make comparisons, flag the pages with sticky notes, locate the
comparisons and read the surrounding text aloud. But noticing and naming
nonfiction conventions are not enough, also think aloud about how they help
us as readers, think aloud about the purpose of each one. Children can either
find examples from the classroom library or create comparisons of their own,
and record one in their CN. For the example of each feature, students should
record in the CN, write the title of the book where the example is found,
and the page number. Daily, share children’s learning in small groups and record
on a two column anchor chart headed {What do we know about nonfiction
conventions<|

Comparisons – Help the reader understand the size of one thing by

comparing it to the size of something familiar (a scissor is as big as a child’s
hand, p. 153)

Day 8

Labels – Help the reader identify a picture or photograph and/or its parts

Day 9

Photographs – Help the reader understand exactly what something looks like

Day 10

Captions – Help the reader better understand a picture or photograph

Week 3: Convention Notebooks (cont.’d)

Day 11

Cutaways – Help the reader understand something by looking at it from the

inside or from a different, sometimes 3-D, perspective

Day 12

Maps – Help the reader understand where things are in the world

Day 13

Types of Print – Help the reader by signaling, {Look at me! I’m important!|
Day 14

Text Bubbles – Help the reader see what’s important by appearing in a box
or bubble.

Day 15

Close-ups – Help the reader see details in something small

Week 4: Convention Notebooks (cont.’d)

Day 16

Tables of Contents – Help the reader identify key topics in the book in the
order they are presented

Day 17

Index – An alphabetical list of almost everything covered in the text, with

page numbers

Day 18

Glossary – Helps the reader define words contained in the text

Day 19

Pronunciation Parentheses – Helps the reader pronounce difficult words that

help with understanding of the context of the word.

Day 20

Graphs – Help the reader see the important information in a more visually
pictorial way instead of reading the information in a paragraph format.
Convention notebooks not only build background information for text features
that children encounter in their reading, but they also can be used as
resources when they synthesize information in order to research questions.
The notebooks help children think through which conventions would showcase
their information best.
Week 5: Locating Specific Information

Day 21

Throughout this study of questioning and nonfiction, ask children to compile

Wonder Cards in their own Wonder Box or the class Wonder Jar. Every
week, pull one out and model for students how you would search for the
answer. Model what we do when we want to find out specific information.
Show them how to think aloud about certain questions:

 What do I already know about the topic?

 What type of book or other source will help me best?
 Where will I find the information?
 How is the information organized in the source? How will I go about
locating what I need?

Then, after I’ve looked through the sources of information:

 What did I learn? How can I synthesize my learning for myself and
others?

Nonfiction Journal Prompts Directions:

Read the assigned selection and write a response.

Begin each response with the book title and the date of your journal entry.

Example: Book Title Nov. 2, 2002

Before you read the book . . .

 What do you know about the topic before getting started on the book?
 What do you want to learn?
 Why did you choose this book?

While reading the book . . .

 What information surprised you?

 How can you use this information in your life?
 What information do you question or think might not be correct? How
might you check it out?
 What is the most important thing you have learned? Why?
 What is the most interesting thing you read?
 What techniques does the author use to make this information easy
to understand?
 Where do you think you could look for more information on this topic?