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Gracia Festival 2012 by Striker
Gracia Festival 2012, a photo by Striker on Flickr.

I always loved my English classes in high school because we read such beautiful literature~ Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, Cyrano de Bergerac, Our Town, Death of a Salesman. I don't remember ever once reading an informational text or a piece of nonfiction. That wasn't what high school English was all about~save that boring stuff for the "other" academic classes. And (to quote most people my age) I turned out just fine. In fact, when it comes to English Language Arts, I turned out better than just fine~I scored an insanely high score on the ELA portion of the ACT.

Other than allowing me the opportunity to CLEP out of my first two years of college English (I still had to pay for the credits), I'm not sure that the high score really meant much to anyone. Once I got into my college classes, I realized that everyone who was an English major had been top dog in that department in high school.

So, here I am over thirty-one years later teaching the subject that I love; but, instead of planning a unit on The Outsiders or The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963, I'm planning a unit on informational text (the unit is called "Face the Facts"). I'm going to be teaching students to locate information using text features and graphic aids. We're going to identify organizational patterns and analyze the text for main idea.

We're going to read a science magazine article about microorganisms that are feasting on the Titanic and another about Great White Sharks and another about the Bubonic Plague~ah, my reluctant readers will be interested in these pieces of text. Really, I'm looking forward to reading them also. I don't read enough informational text in my own personal life. Last night I subscribed to the BBC History magazine on my Kindle~I want to find other interesting articles to share with my students.

Like Tina Turner said, "What's love got to do with it?" Well, nothing really. Those students who enjoy reading (I call them hobby readers) will continue to read for pleasure no matter what pieces of text I teach from in the classroom. Those who aren't hobby readers will probably be glad that I'm not force feeding them treacle and enjoy the class.

I hope to share with you some of my discoveries and ideas for the next few weeks as my students and I embark on this first unit together. Let me know if you come across anything that you think might be of interest.

Melissa

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