The Classroom

9 Ways To Make Teaching Text Structure Fun for Students

Tara Shanley

Mar 15, 2024

Being able to identify and analyze text structures makes reading nonfiction and informational passages easier. Students are expected to start comprehending expository texts and organizing their own ideas in writing as early as third grade, and teaching text structure is one way educators can set them up for success.

When students are used to skill-and-drill methods of learning literacy skills they may be reluctant to pay attention or practice. In this article, we’ll cover nine ways you can make teaching text structure fun and answer some frequently asked questions about how to cover this skill in your classroom.

The 5 types of text structures

In 1975, Bonnie Meyer became one of the first educators and researchers to share that texts often use one or more types of text structures to convey information. She identified five common text structures, which include:

Chronological: Presents events or ideas in the order they happened
Cause and effect: Tells the reason why something happens and what happens after
Problem and solution: Identifies a challenge and suggests ways to fix it
Compare and contrast: Looks at how two things are similar or different
Definition: Describes a topic by listing its characteristics

These structures serve as the outline and organizational strategy of all texts, no matter the genre or content.

9 strategies to teach text structure the fun way

Teaching, practicing, and reinforcing text structure analysis in the classroom doesn’t have to be boring. Use some or all of these nine techniques in your classroom to introduce or add text structure skills practice to any lesson:

1. Practice predictions as text structure detectives

Make predicting text structure a pre-reading activity for any lesson, in any subject. Ask students to be structure sleuths by scanning and searching a text before they read it to determine what the text structure is. Have them look for clues while they read that either back up their original prediction or prompt them to change their predictions.

After reading, have students look at their original predictions and the evidence they collected while reading and choose which text structure matches the passage. Consider doing a big reveal (like unmasking the villain at the end of a Scooby-Doo episode!) to build suspense and excitement about identifying the structure.

2. Use graphic organizers

Graphic organizers are a great visual tool to help students understand information. They break up blocks of text and help students sort information. Plus, students can use completed graphic organizers as a reference tool when predicting or identifying text structures in future assignments.

You can model how to use the graphic organizers to identify text structure, and then challenge students to complete them on their own to pull out key information and identify the text structure of the piece they’re reading.

With Newsela ELA, you can pair interactive graphic organizers with any article. Edit and customize them with the Formative and Newsela integration by clicking the button in the activities panel on the article. If you prefer printed, paper organizers, we’ve also got you covered:

3. Get colorful with annotations

Using text coding strategies is another way to create a visual guide and reference for identifying different types of text structures. By marking up the text with highlighters, colored sticky notes, or another form of color-matched signaling, they can see where different text features or signal words appear.

You can use this coding system across texts and set up your color codes by assigning a color to each text structure. Students can use that color to label all text features that indicate a specific type, like signal words. Model the behavior and coding system for students before encouraging them to practice on their own.

With Newsela ELA, you can use the annotation feature to highlight specific parts of the text, take notes, or ask your students questions about the structure of the text, all within the assigned article.

4. Develop storyboards for texts

Go beyond words, colors, and even graphic organizers, and introduce even more visuals into your text structure lessons. Encourage students to draw pictures or create a storyboard to represent the information described in the passage. You can try this technique for any text structure, though it may be most effective for both narrative and expository chronological texts.

Download your printable: Storyboard worksheet

5. Create a text structure scavenger hunt

All texts have a discernible structure, not just the curated passages you share with students. Share different types of media with them by creating a text scavenger hunt. Use newspapers, magazines, fiction and nonfiction books, textbooks, student-friendly websites, and other resources. Ask them to find an example of each type of text structure. Alternatively, separate students by group and have them work as a team to find five or more texts in one structure across different types of publications and media.

Newsela provides a library of over 15,000 texts covering 20+ genres to add to your scavenger hunt. Curate the hunt by assigning or printing articles that fit each text structure. Use the reading skills search filter and article labels to choose ones created to teach text structure easily.

6. Try sorting activities

Develop a student reading log that encourages them to sort the passages, articles, and stories they read by text structure. Create a larger whole-class tracker that you hang in the classroom for reference. It can include all teacher-assigned texts that students read together, in small groups, or independently.

You can also encourage students to add their independent reading to personal reading logs and determine if they have a favorite type of text structure based on what they choose to read.

7. Develop writing assignments for each text structure

If your students are also learning to write or practicing their writing skills, they can practice recognizing text structure by doing, not just reading. You can model how to write a paragraph or piece that fits each text structure and then encourage students to practice on their own.

Tie the writing assignment to any lesson you’re teaching, or create special writing assignments just to practice writing in text structures. Some sample writing assignments to practice text structure include:

Chronological: Write a step-by-step guide on how to do your favorite activity, like attending a baseball game or making a TikTok video.
Cause and effect: Write about a life-changing moment that happened to you, a friend, or a family member. Share the events that led to that moment.
Problem and solution: Name a problem we have in our school or classroom and provide suggestions on how to fix it.
Compare and contrast: Share five ways you and your sibling or another family member are the same and five ways you're different.
Definition: Describe your pet or your favorite animal using all your senses.

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8. Rewrite passages to change their text structure

Writers can choose to share information in any of the five key text structures. They just choose the one that makes the most sense for the clearest message. Help students play with words and ideas by rewriting a passage written in one text structure as another. For example, you may ask them to rewrite a procedural list as a description paragraph or turn a problem/solution piece into a cause-and-effect text.

Rearranging prewritten text can help students identify transition words, text features, and sentence structures most commonly used in each text structure and apply them to their own writing. With Newsela Writing, you can also encourage students to practice different types of writing, like literary analysis or argumentative writing using the five text structures.

9. Create pattern guides to hang in the classroom

Although studies have shown that too many classroom visuals can distract students during learning, strategically placed ones can act as always-available teaching tools instead. Pattern guides are visuals that help students organize information before, during, and after reading. To teach text structure, create ones personalized to the texts you teach that include features like timelines or comparison charts.

Frequently asked questions about teaching text structure

Still have questions about the most effective ways to teach text structure? Browse some of the most frequently asked questions to get answers:

When should you teach text structure?

Students can start learning the basics of text structure as early as preschool or kindergarten. In practice, this may look like reading picture books with students and pointing out specific points of a story, like the beginning, middle, and end. Elementary and middle school teachers in grades 1-8 can build on those basic skills to teach more complex details about text structure, such as the names of each structure and how to use them in writing.

You can teach text structure and have students practice what they’ve learned at any point during their reading journey, such as before, during, and after reading a text. For example, you can teach text structure:

Before reading: Encourage students to scan a text and identify transitional words that may indicate the text structure of the passage.
During reading: Have students annotate or code the passage to support or refute their predictions.
After reading: Review the students’ annotations and label the passage with the correct text structure.

What should students know before they start to learn text structure?

To help students learn and understand text structure there are a few key things they should understand to get started. Make sure your students know:

Authors who write texts have specific purposes for sharing information.
Each text or section of a text has a main idea that the author wants the reader to understand before they move to the next part.
Authors may connect topics or events in different ways, such as through comparing and contrasting, and there are clues in sentences and passages that make it easier for the reader to understand those connections.

Which text structure should you teach first?

Sequence and description text structures are often the most accessible for the youngest students to learn. These types are often present in narrative texts and stories, which younger students encounter earlier and more frequently than expository nonfiction texts.

Research shows that upper elementary and middle school students learn problem/solution, cause and effect, and compare and contrast text structures more easily than younger elementary students. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait to teach these structures until middle school. Other studies show that teaching compare and contrast text structure with students as young as second grade can be effective.

The following factors can help you determine which teaching sequence is most appropriate for your classroom:

Curriculum
State standards
Assessment requirements
Tools and scaffolds
Students' reading and ability levels

Should you only teach one text structure at a time?

Many texts, textbooks, and other reading materials use a variety of text structures at one time to share information. If you choose to teach one text structure at a time, acknowledge that other types exist and that your students may see them while reading. You can also explain how once they’ve learned about each structure individually, they can learn how the structures work together.

Similar to choosing which text structure to teach first, you can rely on factors like your curriculum, tools, and assessment requirements to guide how you teach text structure in the classroom. With Newsela ELA, you can also teach text structure alongside other literacy skills with the same content. Use the checkboxes in the activities panel of any article to select which skills to assess on each assigned reading.

What should students know after they’ve learned about text structure?

How can you tell if your text structure lessons are hitting home with your students? To check their skill growth and performance, you can use formative assessments to test their knowledge and retention in areas like:

Labeling text structures correctly by name
Identifying relationships between details
Understanding the purpose of each text structure
Proving text structure by identifying signal words or connecting main ideas and details in the text
Identifying if a passage uses more than one text structure
Filling out text structure graphic organizers independently and correctly
Understanding texts on the same topic can have different text structures
Explaining why an author picked one text structure or group of text structures over others
Being able to select and use a text structure in their own writing

How can you help students struggling to understand text structures?

If your students are struggling to understand and retain what they’ve learned about text structure, there are a few ways to help:

Try a different strategy or activity: The one that “clicked” with last year’s students, or even a small group of this year’s students, may not work for everyone. Providing multiple ways to learn and access the information can help.
Go back to the sentence level: Longer passages and walls of text can intimidate any reader, not just students. See if they can identify relationships, like cause and effect, in a single sentence. Then help them scaffold that skill to longer texts.
Build background knowledge on the text topic: Students may understand how to identify text structure, but it’s harder to do when they’re also trying to make sense of the content. Build background knowledge about the passage topic before reading to make sure they understand the content and can focus on practicing the skill.
Review other reading comprehension skills: All literacy skills work together to help students comprehend and understand texts. Reviewing other skills like main idea or key details can help students build a better understanding of skills like text structure.

Teaching text structure with Newsela

The main goal of teaching text structure isn’t just recall. You want students to be able to do more than just repeat back signal words or match a graphic organizer type to a text structure label.

Skill-and-drill approaches to teaching things like text structure can lead to good scores on assessments, but we know we want that and more for your students. You want them to internalize what they learn about text structure and use it to improve their reading comprehension and writing organization across every subject and keep using those skills when they advance to the next grade level.

Newsela can help by incorporating text structure practice into any ELA lesson by supplementing these strategies and others through resources like our ELA Standards and Skills collection or by selecting the text structure skills filter from the search page to show articles with scaffolds that support skills practice.

Not a Newsela customer yet? You can sign up for Newsela Lite for free and get access to the content and skill-building scaffolds you need to teach text structure in your classroom today.