Picture books aren’t just for kids! Modeling text structures through nonfiction mentor books

Hodges, T.S., & Matthews, S. D. (2017). Picture books aren’t just for kids! Modeling text structures through nonfiction mentor books. Voices from the Middle, 24(4), 74-79.


Teaching about text structures is often discussed as a way to help students comprehend the complex texts that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) say students will need to be able to work with in order to be ready for college and careers. The authors present a five-step instructional model (pp. 76-77) and describe how they used that model with sixth grade students.

This article caught my eye because as a teacher educator, I have always struggled with the topic of text structures when it comes up in my literacy methods courses. The problem with this topic is that complex texts often have complex text structures. Yet most of the methods texts and journal articles that cover text structure cite the same five text structure types that Hodges and Matthews cite here in Table 1 (p. 75): Cause-and-Effect, Compare-and-Contrast, Description, Sequence, and Problem-and-Solution. The names for these have changed slightly over the years, but these are recognizable to me as the same old categories I was trying to teach about back in the 1980s.

Text structure was not easy to teach about then, and it’s no easier now, because many complex informational texts cannot be easily classified using these categories. The authors here do acknowledge that texts can have both “macro” and “micro” structures (p.76). The trouble is, several levels can exist in a text, not just two, and multiple structures can often intertwine within a single small chunk of text. You might find a history book that is in Sequence structure at the book level, but would have a chapter that compares and contrasts two historic figures, but within that chapter might be a Cause-Effect chunk, and within that chunk could be a paragraph of Problem-Solution, with maybe a sentence or two of Description in that paragraph.

Complex texts are just that: complex. We like the elegance and simplicity of five nicely defined categories, but real-world texts just don’t work that way. It seems manageable to teach about the key words that can give us clues to what a text’s structure type is, but key words can mislead the reader. Besides, looking at Table 1, I already see some key words that are listed for more than one structure type. It’s overall context that tells us about structure, not searching for key words.

The authors write about the various kinds of graphic organizers that can be used to map out each type of text structure. The idea is that students can try using various kinds of organizers, and if a certain kind “works” better with a text, then that tells the students which text structure the text is (e.g., a Venn Diagram for Compare-Contrast structure). Trouble is, there’s probably more than one viable way to build a graphic organizer for any text. I’ve tried handing short texts to my own teacher candidate students and asking them to build a graphic organizer that represents the content of the text. Invariably, when I have several groups working on the same text, they come up with at least three or four viable graphic organizers, and they all look different.

Although I do think the approach Hodges and Matthews present here oversimplifies the concept of text structure, I did find a lot to like in their five-step instructional model. I like the use of children’s picture books as “mentor texts” for students’ own writing. Text structure is not the only thing to notice about today’s picture books, which are short, accessible, and as the authors note, are often “extremely well written” (p. 77).

Hodges and Matthews take us through five clearly explained instructional steps, with examples at each step. They first teach about the five text structures, and then read picture books that they consider examples of each structure. The students are asked to notice patterns they see in those books. Then they are asked to try to find a graphic organizer that works for that book, and identify the text’s structure. The fourth step is teacher “scaffolding” (p. 77) when the structure isn’t clear (a segment I wish had been developed more in depth). The framework ends with students using text structures, and graphic organizers for those structures, to write their own pieces.

There’s much here that could be useful, and I do intend to try some of the ideas here with my teacher candidates. I already introduce them to mentor texts; much of what I read here was reminiscent of the work of Katie Wood Ray with mentor texts and the notions of “reading like a reader” vs. “reading like a writer”. I highly recommend checking out Ray’s work if the idea of using mentor texts intrigues you.

In the end, though, instruction on text structure, as outlined here, raised more questions for me than it answered, and I really needed answers. Aside from the complexity of text structures being oversimplified to five categories and their respective key words and graphic organizers, I’m concerned about just how much utility there is to spending a lot of classroom time on having students classify texts into one of five categories, or having them deliberately try to write a piece using a certain structure. Do good readers really think so deliberately about what type of text structure a text fits? Do good writers really consciously choose to stick to one particular structure? How much of what we are teaching students about text structure is relevant to real-world, real life reading and writing?

My own experience as a reader and writer, as well as my conversations with other readers and writers, tells me that the real experience of reading and writing is a lot more fluid and organic than the kind of reading and writing this article describes. I think good readers notice things about text as they read that help them make predictions about that text and see “where it is going”, but I doubt if they consciously think, “Oh, hey, there is Problem-Solution structure.” I think good writers may plan out and arrange (and even rearrange) ideas for the most effect, but do they think, “Maybe I’ll write this in Sequence structure”? I doubt it. I’d like to see teachers moving away from classification and categories (even though that may help students take tests and write school assignments). I’d like to see students moving toward more authentic, realistic forms of reading and writing that can engage them and help them do the kinds of reading and writing they will actually want and need to do in their lives.

There was a lot to ponder here, with some things I’ll probably try, and some things I’ll need to think about more. Maybe this would be a good article to look at with my teacher candidates, and see what they think, and we’ll see if we can answer our questions about text structure together.