Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What Kinds of Documents Will I Read in Real Life?: Informational Focus
What Kinds of Documents Will I Read in Real Life?: Informational Focus
Objectives
Informational Text Focus by Carol Jago
Students will
• analyze workplace, public, and con-
sumer documents as well as infor-
mational materials
What Kinds of Documents
• analyze technical directions Will I Read in Real Life?
Let’s say you want to see a movie. Besides finding out the time
and place, you might want to read reviews, get information
Motivate Tell students that even about the cast and director, and reserve seats. You’ll be reading
on days when they do not pick up many types of informational documents, such as the ones below.
a book, they are constantly reading.
They may read a job application, use
an instruction manual, study a bus Workplace Documents Public Documents
schedule, or follow a recipe. Explain
that every time they read a work- The odds are good that in the next thirty years Public documents contain information about
place, consumer, or public document you will hold a variety of jobs. The job you vol- public agencies and community groups. They
unteer for at age thirteen will probably be very can be about voting issues, health concerns, and
or follow directions, they are apply-
different from the one you accept at age forty. many other subjects. They tell about situations,
ing their reading skills to real-world
Whether you are taking orders at a restaurant or decisions, responsibilities, schedules, occasions,
situations.
giving orders to a staff of a thousand, your job will and interesting events. You’ll use public docu-
likely require you to read for information. When ments if you work with a government agency,
earning a living is involved, that information is school, park, or library. Public documents inform
important. The workplace documents you will people what is happening in their community,
read serve two basic functions: communication city, state, nation, and even on the planet.
Guided Practice and instruction.
pp. 598–599
Informational Skills
Resources Differentiating Instruction
■ Analyze workplace documents.
■ Analyze public documents/informational materials. Collection 6 Resources, Info Text Focus English-Language Learners/
■ Analyze consumer documents. Skill Builder, p. 3 Readers Gaining Proficiency
■ Analyze technical directions. PowerNotes, interactive
e9nas8_c06cfm_01.indd 598 lesson Organize students into pairs and have them look at various docu- 10/5/07 10:12:46
presentations with activities ments, such as contracts, television manuals, computer warran-
Teacher One Stop™, on-level lesson ties, furniture assembly instructions, feature sheets for products,
plans and all print resources or résumés. Then, have them classify each document using the
bold words on these two pages. Make sure that students discuss
their reasoning and point out examples from the documents that
back up their choices. Have each group share one of their docu-
ments with the class.
an employee meeting? [memorandum] cal directions. Assign each student a small section of the
• What would you bring to a job interview? [resume] document and have him or her paraphrase the text in his
• What provides information or instructions in a written or or her Reader/Writer Notebooks. Have students discuss
the challenges and benefits of paraphrasing this type of
printed format? [document] Learn It Online
document. For a multimedia version of the instruction found
• What specific type of document is needed to assemble a
computer or other piece of highly technological equip- on this page, use the PowerNotes Literary Focus
presentation. Preview at go.hrw.com.
ment? [technical]
go.hrw.com L8-599 Go