Supporting informational writing in the elementary grades

Donovan, Carol A., & Smolkin, Laura B. (2011). Supporting informational writing in the elementary grades. The Reading Teacher, 64(6), 406-416.


Donovan and Smolkin outline a helpful, practical framework for looking at the various kinds of text structures found in informational texts for children. This framework is much more useful than some of the categories of text structures found previously in the literature and in reading methods texts. The typical categories of text structures (e.g., Listing, Time Order, Comparison/Contrast, Cause/Effect, etc.) have been less than helpful for my own teaching because those categories examined informational text structures on too large a scale—a macro level, almost—when in reality informational text is much more complex than that, with multiple smaller structures occurring in any given text. When my students (both children and preservice teachers) looked for examples of the old macro-type text structure categories in informational texts, they often had a hard time finding them. Donovan and Smolkin’s categories CAN be found in typical children’s informational books; I know, because after I read this article, I looked in a number of exemplary children’s informational books and easily found examples of all of Donovan’s categories there. My mind immediately began racing with the possibilities of using these categories instructionally, and I could not wait to try those possibilities out with learners. When a framework creates that reaction in me as a teacher, I know it is a “keeper.”

There are eight categories in Donovan and Smolkin’s framework, and they are arranged along a developmental continuum, with the first category, Labels, presented as the simplest type of informational text at the most basic developmental level, and moving through increasingly “mature” developmental categories. We move from Labels , to Fact Statements, to Fact Lists, to Couplets (often connected by pronouns), to Fact List Collections, to Couplet Collections ,to Single and Unordered Paragraphs, to the most sophisticated structural category, Ordered Paragraphs. The continuum, which is outlined in the very helpful Table 1 (pp. 408-409), along with examples of each category, can be used in several ways. The authors suggest using it as a way of determining children’s informational text writing “levels” and then planning instruction to move the children from one developmental level to the next. For example, if a child has mastered Labels (“This is a bat.”), then he or she is ready to be scaffolded to move on to Fact Statements (“Bats are mammals.”). A Fact List (“Bats are mammals. Bats eat insects. Bats can fly.”) is the next step, and then it is on to the much more sophisticated Couplet structure (“Bats have wings with long fingers. These fingers help the bat move through the air.”). The sequence could move a child through all eight developmental levels over time. The developmental nature of Donovan and Smolkin’s continuum is potentially useful for both pre- and post- instruction assessment, and for instruction, not just in writing informational text as the authors intend, but also for helping children read and comprehend instructional text. Although the authors’ research was done with elementary age children, the categories and the developmental continuum can also be applied to older children in middle school and even high school, and the informational texts they read and write.