Illuminating Text From the Inside Out: Using Text Structure To Improve Comprehension for Older Readers

Thursday, April 10, 2025

What’s the best approach to teach comprehension?
What makes expository text so challenging?

The use of text structure to improve comprehension is a powerful, yet often underutilized approach to help students integrate the big ideas across text. During this presentation—aimed at students who may be struggling in grades 4 and beyond—you’ll learn to connect research with immediate application about teaching various text structures to scaffold students’ ability to incorporate relevant ideas and content within narrative and expository texts.

Defining text structure, the research behind it, and cognitive integration theory—“We learn better if we have a frame or structure to attach that learning to”—helps all students, including those in middle school and beyond, succeed with reading comprehension and fluency.

Join this fascinating and applicable presentation during which our literacy expert shares the research and helpful Knowledge Acquisition and Transformation (KAT) framework that can be a game changer for so many striving readers.

Attendees will:

• Connect the research base about general cognitive learning to text structure specifically
• Understand the significance of teaching text structure in an explicit and consistent manner to improve comprehension
• Receive information and resources to incorporate text structure learning into current classroom practices

Presenter