Provide+Exposure+to+a+Volume+and+Range+of+Texts

=Provide Exposure to a Volume and Range of Texts= by Dana Bard

//"Particularly, the volume of experiences students have interacting with texts both in and out of the classroom significantly correlates with their overall reading success..."// (Samuels and Farstrup, p. 58).

//In addition to volume as an influencing factor, the quality and range of books to which students are exposed (e.g. electronic texts, leveled books, student/teacher published work) has a strong relationship with students' reading comprehension"// (Samuels and Farstrup, p. 59).

Therefore, effective reading comprehension support provides exposure to a wide variety of texts.
It is especially important to provide exposure to the full range of genres students are expected to comprehend, such as:
 * Narrative genres which share and make meaning of experiences
 * Fiction such as fairy tales, short stories, novels, and much that is non-fiction
 * Informational genres which convey information about natural or social phenomena (the "informational texts" which the Common Core Standards are emphasizing) such as:
 * Websites, textbooks, and other informational books
 * Hybrid genres such as:
 * Autobiographies, biographies, procedural how-to manuals, and persuasive argumentation
 * Poetry
 * Drama
 * Functional genres such as:
 * Signs, labels, coupons, lists, and letter

Additionally, effective reading comprehension support provides exposure to a wide range of complexity in texts.
This wide range of text complexity is an important standard in the Common Core State Standards. For good reason.


 * Reading texts that are easily comprehended build students' sense of self-efficacy as they successfully employ comprehension strategies.
 * Reading texts that are in their zone of proximal development provides students with a challenge to grow; these texts give students a chance to put their comprehension strategies to work.
 * Reading well-written challenging texts, those that are at a frustration level--while not appropriate most of the time--do have some value in small doses; exposure to these texts allows the teacher to explicitly teach comprehension strategies. In addition, these texts provide students an opportunity to think about their own process of meaning-making in their own written work.

Resources for additional reading:

 * Reading Comprehension and Informational Texts an annotated bibliography