Informational Texts as Read-Alouds at School and Home

Abstract

The role of informational text in primary-grade classrooms has been the subject of much discussion in recent years, and there is converging evidence that young school children have few opportunities to engage with this genre. The studies described here expand the research base to include preschool (Study 1) and home (Study 2) exposures to informational text as read-alouds. School data included 1,830 read-aloud titles from 1,144 teachers of preschool through third grade. Home data included 1,847 titles reported by the parents or other family members of 20 kindergartners over the course of a school year. The findings suggest that in both of these environments-school (including preschool) and home-children have far less exposure to informational text than narrative text. Further, a trend was revealed suggesting that boys may be read proportionately more informational texts in their homes than girls.

Task Difficulty of Macro-Genres and Reading Strategies and Reading Comprehension

“…Moreover, compared to both descriptive and narrative genre types, this task type seems to be more demanding for leaners because of the kind of lexical items and specific structures of the text. It also seems to be more difficult in the assessments provided by the learners based on their perceived difficulty of the task (Yopp and Yopp, 2006). As stated earlier, technical vocabulary and specific grammatical structures are two of the factors which may influence learners' perceptions of task difficulty and their comprehension of reading such texts (see (Skehan, 1998;Robinson, 2005)).…”

“…Expository texts are written to convey, describe, or explain non-fictional information (Yopp and Yopp, 2006). Such text types include structural organization of the concepts and propositions which differentiate them from the rest of texts.…”

“…Such text types include structural organization of the concepts and propositions which differentiate them from the rest of texts. In comparison with the narrative tasks, expository tasks are more difficult for ESL/EFL learners to understand because they have specific text structures, contain technical vocabulary, and require readers to have more background knowledge (Yopp and Yopp, 2006). Moreover, compared to both descriptive and narrative genre types, this task type seems to be more demanding for leaners because of the kind of lexical items and specific structures of the text.…”

“…Children's reading success, for example, is negatively affected by neglecting the importance of expository genre after the third grade. Providing children with more opportunities to explore expository texts is, accordingly, encouraged (Yopp and Yopp, 2006).…”

Making the Case for Using Informational Text in Preschool Classrooms

“…Yopp and Yopp (2006) studied read-aloud practices in preschool through third-grade classrooms and discovered that of the books teachers read aloud to students, approximately 8% were classified as informational text. Looking specifically at the preschool classrooms in the study, 5% of the books read aloud were informational text.…”