Many young children are not provided adequate access to informational text in early literacy classrooms (Duke, 2000). However, reading informational texts early and often is very important for children! Informational texts help children to develop content knowledge, learn new vocabulary, and gain familiarity with subject area language conventions. What’s more, we now know that children’s text comprehension is heavily influenced by their knowledge of the subjects about which they are reading (Cabell & Hwang, 2020). In other words, a child who generally reads well might show poor text comprehension when they are reading about something they’ve never heard of before.

Knowledge matters!

There has long been a myth circulating in the halls of early childhood settings that children have to “learn to read before reading to learn”. While it is certainly true that we must spend a lot of instructional time in PreK-3rd grade ensuring that children learn to decode and orally read fluently, this does not mean that we can ignore children’s knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension development until they read fluently. Children actually learn a lot from being read to and from reading simple informational texts themselves, and we cannot wait for children to be conventional readers before we can expect them to be learning new information from books.

Snow, Science, & Literacy

Winter is a great time to engage in integrated units about science and literacy! A popular example in early childhood is the study of animals in winter. What PreK-3rd grade teacher hasn’t done the classic penguin unit, right? Or experiments with freezing points of different liquids? The structure of snowflakes? The possibilities are nearly endless!

Let’s take your winter units to the next level with some evidence-based ideas for incorporating complex informational texts!

Use Informational Texts!

Sure, it seems obvious…but research suggests that early childhood teachers tend to use narrative over informational texts (Duke, 2000). Yes, you can still read The Mitten (Brett, 1979), but this winter, try to add in some readings from nonfiction books to help children become familiar with more scientific readings. Feel like the books are too long for one sitting? Don’t read everything at once! Select specific sections of a text that meet your learning goals, then talk to students about how you read informational texts differently from fiction books.

Teach Critical Vocabulary!

There is nothing cuter than a five-year-old dropping words like hibernation or temperature. Let your students surprise you with the high level words they can learn! (It’s good for them.) Remember – Select two to three key words to teach during the reading. Provide a kid-friendly definition with visuals and examples. Review the words throughout the week, referring back to the books and visuals. Enjoy the e-mails from surprised parents wondering where their child learned the word crystalize. 

Read, Experiment, Write, Repeat!

Try incorporating a pre-experiment reading activity to help children learn new vocabulary and conceptual knowledge. Experimenting with water, ice, and snow? Read a text first, using the vocabulary teaching process above, to help children learn that reading is done for varied purposes. Then, as children conduct the experiment, have them draw, label, and/or write about their observations. What a kindergartener perceives as “playing scientist” is actually a critical literacy practice session!

Learn More:

https://www.nellkduke.org/informational-text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NObjH6Ix_tA