While much research has separately considered informational texts and students who struggle with reading, few studies have looked at how these two interact together and what the possible benefits might be. This study provides descriptive information about the perceptions of informational texts from three striving readers. Each student was interviewed and additional data were collected about the students’ literacy environments from their parents, teachers, and classrooms. Results showed that the three students spoke positively about informational texts and that two of the most attractive qualities are interesting material and making meaning from pictures. Within their classrooms, the three students were exposed to a considerable number of informational texts. While the professional literature advocates the use of informational texts for the benefit of boys, it is interesting to note that the two girls in this study chose to read a considerable number of informational texts. It is concluded that informational texts appealed to the three striving reader study participants. Ideas for helping parents and teachers use informational texts with striving readers are presented.

While much research has separately considered informational texts and students who struggle with reading, few studies have looked at how these two interact together and what the possible benefits might be. This study provides descriptive information about the perceptions of informational texts from three striving readers. Each student was interviewed and additional data were collected about the students’ literacy environments from their parents, teachers, and classrooms. Results showed that the three students spoke positively about informational texts and that two of the most attractive qualities are interesting material and making meaning from pictures. Within their classrooms, the three students were exposed to a considerable number of informational texts. While the professional literature advocates the use of informational texts for the benefit of boys, it is interesting to note that the two girls in this study chose to read a considerable number of informational texts. It is concluded that informational texts appealed to the three striving reader study participants. Ideas for helping parents and teachers use informational texts with striving readers are presented.

While educators and speech-language pathologists have been found to utilize informational texts far less than fictional texts when working with young children, informational texts can support young children's academic and language development. This study qualitatively analyzed how children engaged in informationally-based activities and how instructors interacted with children to support their engagement and learning. Fifty-three children from 4 Head Start classrooms participated in small and large group STEM-based instructional activities for 2 days each across 2 weeks. The instructional unit related to how plants grow and how they are used for food. The researchers reviewed and transcribed video recordings and coded turn exchanges as the children participated in 2 small group science-based activities in the first week of the unit, for a total of 8 analyzed sessions. Overall, children demonstrated positive verbal and nonverbal responses while participating in the science-based activities. Instructors were found to use facilitative strategies such as bridging the contextualized experiences to remote concepts, but did not utilize strategies consistently. Instructors were responsive to children's contributions and exchanges between children and instructors were typically 2-3 turns. Instructors could have further developed these exchanges by elaborating or asking thought-provoking questions to highlight targeted concepts. This study supported the idea that young children can respond positively to informational content. Educators and speech-language pathologists can purposefully utilize informational texts with young children and should attempt to help children connect immediate experiences to abstract STEM-based content and concepts.

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Although scholars have long advocated the use of informational texts in the primary grades, gaps and inconsistencies in research have produced conflicting reports on how teachers used these texts in the primary curriculum, and how primary students dealt with them during instruction and on their own (e.g., Saul & Dieckman, 2005). Thus, to add to research on informational texts in the primary grades, the purpose of this study was to examine: (a) a first-grade teacher's use of science informational trade books (SITBs) in her classroom, (b) the ways students responded to her instruction, and (c) how students interacted with these texts. My study was guided by a sociocultural perspective (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978), providing me a lens to examine participants during naturally occurring social practices in the classroom, mediated by language and other symbolic tools. Data were collected by means of 28 observations, 6 semi-structured interviews, 21 unstructured interviews, and 26 documents over the course of 10 weeks. Three themes generated from the data to provide insight into the teacher's and students' practices and interactions with SITBs. First, the first-grade teacher used SITBs as teaching tools during guided conversations around the text to scaffold students' understanding of specialized vocabulary, science concepts, and text features. Her instruction with SITBs included shared reading lessons, interactive read-alouds and learning activities during two literacy/science units. However, there was limited use of SITBs during the rest of her reading program, in which she demonstrated a preference for narrative. Second, students responded to instruction by participating in guided conversations around the text, in which they used prior knowledge, shared ideas, and visual representations (e.g., illustrations, diagrams, labels, and captions) to actively make meaning of the text. Third, students interacted with SITBs on their own to make sense of science, in which they demonstrated their interest in reading the texts, formed connections to science, used reading strategies, and adjusted to the text type and variations of text complexity. The findings indicate the teacher's practices with SITBs were supportive of literacy and science learning for students at various levels of reading development. However, her inexperience with informational books and her preference for narrative demonstrates a need for training to assist her in providing guided and individualized reading instruction with SITBs, as well as provide students with full access to these texts in the classroom. Further, the teacher's overgeneralizations for science during instruction with SITBs indicates the need for training to strengthen her knowledge of science that would better prepare her to convey information and critically read information presented in these texts. Finally, the students' engagement with SITBs and their use of strategies to make sense of these texts on their own, indicates the first graders were motivated and capable readers of informational books.

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