Expository Text Structure: Middle School
Match short textbook-style passages to their organizational structure.
Session summary (SOAP)
Stays on this screen. Nothing is saved or sent.
Mark a card Correct, Correct with cue or Incorrect and the summary writes itself here.
How to run it
Make the student point at the signal word. Unlike is what makes the first one a comparison, and when is what makes the second causal, and identifying the word rather than the structure is what transfers to a passage the student has never seen. The two production items at the end are the check — recognising a structure is much easier than building one. Fifteen minutes covers eight items with the signal-word step.
Cueing ladder
Start at the top. Add support one step at a time.
- IndependentPresent the item and wait 5 seconds of quiet before helping.Log as correct
- Question promptAsk a story-grammar question: who, where, what was the problem, what happened next?Log as cued
- Two choicesOffer two possible next parts of the story and let the student pick and say it.Log as cued
- ModelTell that part yourself; the student tells it back in their own words.Log as cued
Adjust it
Use fewer parts, and keep a first-next-last visual on the table.
Ask for the retell without the pictures, with a feeling or a reason added to each part.
Matching IEP goal
Given a picture or story prompt, Student will explain a topic with a main idea and supporting details in 4 of 5 opportunities across 3 consecutive sessions, given no more than one question prompt.
Send it home through the parent portal →About this activity
Eight items that give a textbook-style sentence and ask what structure it uses: Unlike gas engines, electric motors have far fewer moving parts; When the levee failed, three neighborhoods flooded within an hour; To change a tire — loosen the lugs, jack the car, remove the wheel; A whale shark reaches forty feet and has over 300 rows of tiny teeth. Two of the eight flip it and ask the student to write one.
What to listen for
Watch the whale shark item, which is description and is the structure students most often mislabel, because a list of facts feels like it should be something more. Notice whether the student can produce a compare-and-contrast sentence when asked — that final pair of items separates a student who can label from one who can write, and the gap is usually wide.
Carrying it home
Any textbook paragraph works for this. Asking what the paragraph is doing — comparing, explaining a cause, listing steps — takes ten seconds and makes a page of text less shapeless.
What's in this activity
- 'Unlike gas engines, electric motors have far fewer moving parts.' -- structure?
- 'When the levee failed, three neighborhoods flooded within an hour.' -- structure?
- 'To change a tire: loosen the lugs, jack the car, remove the wheel.' -- structure?
- 'Districts have a bus-driver shortage. Some now stagger start times.' -- structure?
- 'A whale shark reaches forty feet and has over 300 rows of tiny teeth.' -- structure?
- Write one compare-and-contrast sentence about two sports.
- Write one cause-and-effect sentence about staying up late.
- Which structure do most science procedures use?
Questions
- What grades is this for?
- Sixth through eighth, where textbook reading becomes the main source of new content.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all eight items play with no account.
- Why does text structure matter for comprehension?
- Because it tells a reader what to expect and what to hold onto. A student who recognises a compare-and-contrast passage knows to track two things; one who does not reads it as a list of facts and remembers none of them.
Use this board with your caseload
With a free account, every correct, cued and incorrect mark is saved to the student and scored against their IEP goal, with the data written up for you. Assign it as home practice through the parent portal.
Track progress freeFree for SLPs. No card, no trial clock.