Q. What is necessary to effective reading, composing, and understanding of

informational text structures?A. Five Kinds of Knowledge

Five Kinds of Composing

Jeffrey D. WilhelmBoise State University

From the bookGET IT DONE! Teaching the reading and

writing of informational textHeinemann Publishers

From “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys”

• “It’s like a teacher takes you out, throws you into the deep end of the pool . . .

• Students want significant challenges but they want proactive help in meeting those challenges.

• “I used to be smart, and then . . .”• 5th grade reading slump/McKenna studies

Preparing kids for success: think of a joke you didn’t understand

• Motivation as the continuing impulse to learn• Be proactive instead of reactive• Reward risks and errors, as errors are a sign of

growth• Provide students with heuristics that will assist

them to expertise and guide them through their zones of proximal development to a new zone of actual development

A Teaching Heuristic: Five kinds of knowledge necessary to all reading and composing

• Knowledge of purpose and context• Procedural knowledge of substance (knowing

how to get the stuff)• Procedural knowledge of form (knowing how

to shape and structure the stuff into a conventional form)

• Declarative knowledge of substance• Declarative knowledge of form

5 Kinds of Knowledge• Purpose/Work that can be done in real

life/disciplinary situations:• WHY and WHEN would we WRITE OR READ THIS

KIND OF TEXT? • Procedural Knowledge of Substance:• HOW CAN WE GET THE “STUFF” TO WRITE OR READ

THIS KIND OF TEXT? (INQUIRY) • Procedural Knowledge of Form:• WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO WITH THE “STUFF” TO

SHAPE IT INTO A CONVENTIONAL, RECOGNIZABLE ARGUMENT, SATIRE, FABLE, ETC.?

5 kinds of composingInformal Writing:• Composing to plan (purpose and substance)• Composing to practice (substance and form)(Conceptual/Declarative knowledge developed

through Procedural knowledge)Formal Writing/Putting it all together:• Preliminary draft composing• Final draft composing (revise/edit/proofread)• Composing to transfer (reflect and consolidate

all 5 kinds of knowledge)

HEURISTICS vs. Algorithms

• Heuristics are flexible problem-solving repertoires based on principles so can be developed and transformed and transferred to new situations

• Algorithms are inflexible, lock-step, one-size fits all protocols for use.

Connections to the CCSS and the next generation of standards/assessments

• Focus on Informational/Explanatory and Argument text structures

• Focus on Research and Inquiry (short and extended)

• Focus on Rhetorical Stance: Authorial choice, purpose, voice, audience consideration

• Focus on how authorial choices and text patterns lead to meaning and effect

• Focus on production, revision, presentation

The What Comes through the Why and the How

The declarative becomes conceptual and transferable when it is practiced in a meaningful context of use

Informational text structures mentioned in the CCSS

• Naming/listing• Description/Process Description (How-to)• Summary• Definition/Extended Definition• Comparison• Classification (Grouping, Differentiatiion)• Cause and effect• Problem-solution

Knowledge of Purpose and ContextAsk an essential question that requires and rewards thinking and

composing in informational thought patterns/text structures: What makes and breaks a good relationship? Requires and rewards Argument of Judgment; reframe to:What is a good relationship? A healthy relationship? What is a

good friend? (extended definition)What kinds of relationships are there? healthy relationships?

(classification)What are the major causes relational problems? (Cause and effect)What could society do to promote good relationships/solve

particular relational problems? (problem-solution)

Situated Cognition

• Teach all strategies and concepts in service of addressing the essential question

• What kinds of writing, multimedia composing, and social action would address the question and use what was learned about the question?

Knowledge of purpose and context• Brainstorm for a unit or text you

already teach• What kind of essential question

could you ask that would require and reward the reading and writing of informational thought patterns and text structures?

• REQUIRING LISTING: “What do we need to survive and thrive?” can easily be adapted for use in all content areas: “What do we need to survive and thrive . . . on a camping trip, in outer space, in algebra class, in the future (e.g. in a career), in case of a terrorist attack, as a sustainable planet, while living in another culture, on a trip to Italy?"

• REQUIRING DESCRIPTION: “What is the best possible school? ” “How can we become the best possible school?” (process description)

• REQUIRING SUMMARY: What do we need to know to be an informed voter?

Knowledge of purpose and context• Brainstorm for a unit or text you

already teach• What kind of essential question

could you ask that would require and reward the reading and writing of informational thought patterns and text structures?

The Five Kinds• Are are both heuristics for developing heuristics –• for moving beyond algorithms and lockstep

formulas • for developing a toolkit – a generative repertoire

of tools that can be extended, further developed and flexibly used throughout a lifetime.

• THAT’S WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT WE TEACH STUDENTS HOW TO ENGAGE IN THE FIVE KINDS OF COMPOSING AND HELP THEM DEVELOP THE FIVE KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE!

• The five kinds helps me, AS A TEACHER, think about how to provide students with the planning tools and the practice to develop knowledge of purpose/context and procedural knowledge of substance and form.

• Declarative knowledge naturally comes from and results from enacting the procedures – and when we did it this way the declarative knowledge becomes conceptual and toolish!

Let’s look at SUMMARY writing

• Because everybody summarizes all the time and it is WAY WAY harder than we think to do it well

We typically

• Help students to generate the substance of a summary through prompts

• 60 second summary! Freewrite for 60 seconds about what was most important in this excerpt

Let’s do one

• Reflect on your process

Task analysis: Booktalk summaries• The major character, Katniss, living in District 13 of

the country of Panem, volunteers to replace her sister as the tribute to play in the Hunger Games. She is essentially a victim selected as a sacrifice by the tyrannical leaders to punish a past uprising and exert their oppressive will on the people . . .

• The Hunger Games, a dystopian novel, examines how individuals can respond in the face of oppression by following the story of Katniss who resists the status quo by playing the game in such a way . . .

Which is better?• In a longer text you can recreate the things

that the details add up to, but in a summary you have to articulate up front the whole so people know how to understand the pieces you are going to share because you have articulated the whole.

• A good summary first articulates that which everything else in service of.

• BUT the more a student likes at book the more apt they are to retell the story.

The task of a summary

• is to share an abbreviated version of the kind of work that an experienced reader does in their encounter with a text.

• First thing a literary reader or moviegoer does

is place the work on an intertextual grid - so you want to approximate this in a summary of a movie or book.

Procedural Knowledge of Form

• Schema theory suggests that a summary should immediately provide a structure into which the reader will place the details that follow, that the reason this is important – and ways that summary works uniquely – is that in other texts there is time to develop and correct schematic understandings from the bottom up but a summary has to work from the top down.

Threshold moves – crux moves

• Tellability• Gistability• Take-away-ability

How do we achieve this?

The 5 kinds of Composing • is a way to think about activity, and what activities I need to

do when to help students be successful with reading and composing specific kinds of texts.

• It helps me see that classrooms need to be places of

production and not consumption, places where students produce conversations, texts and meaning. In consumption, the teacher has control; in production the students are given control

• Also creates a context for promoting the dynamic mindset –

for kids to know what to work on to outgrow themselves and become more competent.

Declarative Procedural

Form Quotation marks enclose speakers words and end punctuationTag lines can be at beginning, middle, or end of speakingNew paragraph (indent) every time speakers change

How do we help kids practice using the correct conventions:Provide modelsapplying rules to borrowed dialoguewrite notes back and forth and then transfer it to a dialogueKinesthetic mystery potProduce a dialogue together and punctuate it togetherPractice editing own work for punctuation and tag lines

Substance Tag lines: should reveal emotion, subtextQuote: be substantive, move things forward, revealingVoice: should be dramatic, reveal character, dialectSubstance: Talk should matter/be about something, reveal character

How can we make it happen? Practice generating dialogue by: Dramatize a scene or problemRole Play *ScenariosPicture talk activityStep into the picture activityFill in missing dialogue in a cartoon, fill in some of the missing dialogue Turn the volume down on a video and students provide the dialogue

Purpose To reveal character, and further plot, provide background information in a way that is lively to read and contextualized in human interactions

Create and intensify conflict, use of multiple voices and perspectives, eliminate texture and streamline the writing, dramatize interaction, show vs. tell

Principles of Sequencing

• Move from easy to hard; close to home to further from home

• Visual and visually supported to purely textual• Oral to written• Short to long/lots of repetition• Concrete to abstract• Directly stated to implicit meanings• Collaborative to independent• Scaffolded to independent• Build a heuristic - a problem solving repertoire - through

repeated practice

More thoughts on sequencing• Sequence by complexity within type

1- Students likely to know evidence/data already 2- Teacher provides evidence/data

3- Students draw on single text4- Students draw on range of secondary sources5- Students draw on range of primary sources6- Students generate new data through their own critical inquiry

From the forthcoming books:

Oh Yeah? Teaching ArgumentGet it Done! Teaching Informational Texts

Tell me a Story: Teaching NarrativeBy Jeff Wilhelm, Michael Smith and Jim

FredricksenHeinemann PublishersAvailable summer 2012

Think about it!!!

• 4 postulates for change!• Unreasonable to expect to change much more

than 10% a year• Unreasonable and unprofessional to change

LESS than 10% of year• If you change 10% a year, you change much

else because knowledge and practice much more because knowledge and practice is a network!

Achieving Flow• A clear Purpose, Goals, Reward for Risks and

Immediate Feedback• A Challenge that requires an appropriate level of skill

and Assistance to meet the challenge (as needed to be successful)

• A sense of Control and Developing Competence -voice, opinion, identity staking, choice, naming growing competence

• A focus on Immediate Experience -current relevance, make things, do things, immediate function, fun, humor

• Importance of the Social -group work, peer assistance, social purpose