Learning & Teaching Sequences for Reading – Non-Fiction Level 4-5
Giant Pandas
Sample text: Giant Panda
(http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giant_panda.html)
Giant Panda is used to illustrate the learning and teaching sequence at this level. Students learn how the giant panda is an example of an endangered species and the steps that can be taken to protect them. One way in which students can enhance their knowledge of this topic is by using their literacy knowledge to work on written text relating to the topic.
The learning and teaching sequence here illustrates the use of written text information in both online and conventional contexts. Students are encouraged to get their knowledge of the topic ready; to build an improved understanding while reading; and to consolidate and review their new understanding of the topic.
Strategies that facilitate learning from this type of text include teaching students to:
- Describe their reading plan for learning by reading both online and conventional texts.
- Skim and scan the text for key words and decide its likely topic.
- Identify how a text is organised; distinguish between different types of informative texts; and use this to say what they might know having read a particular type of text.
- Read the text independently, either silently or aloud as appropriate.
- Use vocabulary enhancement strategies to work out the subject specific meanings of unfamiliar topic words.
- Use sentence comprehending strategies such as combining visualising and paraphrasing to comprehend more complex language statements.
- Use paragraph comprehending strategies to infer the main idea of a paragraph.
- Use paragraph synthesis strategies.
- Consolidate and review what they read.
The teaching activities recommend both group reading activities, with one or more students reading aloud, and individual silent reading. During each teaching session the text is read as an interactive group learning activity.
Typical of web pages, the information in Giant Panda (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giant_panda.html) is organised into columns. In this case the text is in two columns, one that is largely factual information in point form and one in prose. In addition, the page includes various sources of multimedia information, video data, audio data and photographs.
Prior to reading Giant Panda, it is recommended that students describe their reading plans for comprehending hypertext pages. Their plans need to indicate how they will:
- Take a big picture view of the information that indicates their awareness of the need to integrate the various sources of information, and how they will do this.
- Deal with each source of information in a detailed way.
- Integrate these various sources.
A useful literacy strategy is to initially read and comprehend the prose text and use this knowledge as a framework for integrating the factual information. Once the students have read the text, they are encouraged to pursue further texts in either online or hard copy information sources. This should provide further opportunity for students to practise factual reading strategies. In addition, individual students can share the information sources they have located and used with class peers and identify how each source assisted them to answer relevant questions.