Jennifer - I think you're exactly right - there is a difference between main idea/details text structure and descriptive structure. And I think you described them both beautifully. The book on Lincoln may have both - and more.... that's the difficult part about reading content area textbooks. Not only is the vocabulary difficult, but very often I find the author switiching text structures between paragraphs. I think if you can get your students to recognize this, it will help them "decipher" the textbooks! Dana
----- Original Message ---- From: "Palmer, Jennifer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Special Chat List for "To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension"" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 7:57:37 PM Subject: Re: [Understand] Main idea.... I think what I am trying to tease out is the idea of text organization...descriptive text structures vs. main idea/detail text structure. So many of the things I have read up to this point have them as two different text structures. In a particular text, there is a main idea that the author intends and there is what is important from the reader's point of view which may or may not be the same thing. Yet, when a writer composes a text, gives it a title or subtitle and then organizes it by putting the most important idea or overarching big idea first...isn't that a main idea/details text structure? I thought a descriptive text structure as one where the ideas are all of relatively equal importance...say I was trying to write a paragraph to describe my garden. I would tell you what flowers were in it, how big it was, what colors the flowers are, the bees and birds that visit it. If the text structure were main idea/details, I might start with a statement about how it is important to plant flowers native to your area for a successful garden and then give examples from my own garden that have flourished because they were native to my area...good for the soil and weather here in Maryland. I would think the book on Lincoln might have both kinds of stuctures in it..though I don't know that, since I am unfamiliar with it. I bet it would also be organized chronologically... OR Am I totally off base here...is the main idea/detail structure I have described above just another kind of descriptive text structure? What is everyone else thinking? Jennifer Palmer Reading Specialist, National Board Certified Teacher FLES- Lead the discovery, Live the learning, Love the adventure. "Children grow into the intellectual life around them." -Vygotsky ________________________________ _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
