Do me a favor... click on the following two books and read their synopsis from Amazon
Unless you're a rare breed of middle-schooler, you chose the novel, and until recently, your expectations would have been met. However, with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (don't know what those are? Click here) Language Arts classrooms are becoming more and more centered on Informational or nonfiction text.
As you might imagine, this can be a hard sell for Middle School students, and as you also might imagine, informational text has been the source of the lowest scores for my students on the Maryland Assessment of Progress (MAP text). That's why my project will focus on giving students some concrete learning strategies to aid in comprehension of informational texts.
Though a little outdated, Lawrence Erickson's 1998 article: "Informational Literacy in the Middle Grades" details some strategies that he believes are effective for teaching informational text. While I haven't decided for certain the strategies I will use in the study, I like his non-intimidating introduction. Feel free to review here.
If I can find a way to get my students more engaged in informational text, and equip them with effective learning strategies, we can move improve test scores and help them be successful not only in my classroom, but in other content areas, in college courses, and in life!
I would also pick the fiction text if given the choice of books to read. What about enticing students into reading nonfiction books with a hook activity? I'm guessing you probably already do this but showing a short video clip that relates to the book that would catch a middle school-aged students' attention. An activity that gets students asking questions that the book would be able to answer.
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