Understanding Informational Text: 7 Motivating Activities for Early Readers This Summer

Parents: Your students are still learning to read, so when should they begin reading to learn? Right now! 

In fact, reading informational text builds background knowledge, supports development of academic language, and can capitalize on students' natural curiosity about the world around them. Sounds like the perfect recipe for keeping your students engaged and learning during summer break, right?

Informational text often develops a topic by providing a hierarchy of main ideas and supporting details. As listeners and as readers, students must be able to recognize text types, identify the relationships among pieces of information, and distinguish between core concepts and details. These featured activities will motivate children to make the most of information in a variety of forms.

Spot the difference

Help to reinforce the differences between an informational text (the author presents facts about the real world to inform the reader) and a story (the author writes about realistic or imagined characters and events to entertain the reader) for your child. Share a variety of excerpts from leveled reading material. After each one, have your child determine whether an excerpt is an informational text or a story.

Category buckets

Introduce the concept of main ideas and details through collaborative categorizing activities to your child. Provide a broad category (main idea), such as vegetables, and have them generate examples (details) that fit into the category. Alternatively, provide examples of items in a category and have them suggest the category name. Creating "category buckets" is a great way to engage children in exploring and then labeling collections of small, related items. For example, a plastic bucket or basket could hold items used to write: A pencil, a crayon, a pen, and a marker.

A common thread

Many children more readily grasp the concept of main ideas and details when presented with visual information or an illustration. With this in mind, display a fun, detailed scene, such as a photograph of a birthday party or an amusement park map. As your child discusses the details, record this information on a piece of paper. Next, ask them to develop a main idea statement by thinking about what these details have in common.

Sort the sentences

Give your child several sentence strips about a topic, including some with detail and some with main ideas. Remind them that details often answer questions such as who, what, when, where, why, and how. Have them sort the sentences into details and main ideas, explaining their reasoning. Then, see if they can organize these sentences into a paragraph about the topic.

Draw from experience

Your children will also benefit from—and enjoy!—more expressive activities that allow them to develop their own informational topics. Develop main idea sentences (e.g., Some of my friends have pets; There are many things to do outside). Next, have them work to generate details to support that main idea. They can record this information in a graphic organizer, which can be used to write about or orally present the idea.

Stars and stripes

Review with your child the difference between a main idea (i.e. the most important idea in a passage) and supporting details (i.e. pieces of information that tell more about the main idea). Explain that as we read informational text, we think about what the author is telling us, as well as how the author has organized the passage. Display and read a brief informational paragraph. Have your child annotate the text in different colors, drawing a star next to the main idea and underlining the supporting details.

Paragraph analysis

If your child is ready for a more challenging opportunity to dive into informational text, present them with a multi-paragraph passage. Assign them a different paragraph within the text. They should read their paragraph, identify the main idea and details, and record the information in a graphic organizer. They can then use their notes to discuss their paragraph.

Early readers benefit from exposure to informational text in all forms—magazine features, speeches, movie reviews, how-to articles, biographies, and more. Reading for content plays an integral role in the process of learning to read. By giving children an opportunity to become familiar with the organization of informational text and the relationships among main ideas and supporting details, you are giving them access to a world of knowledge and keeping them engaged during summer break.