Text Structures and Fables: Teaching Students to Write About What

State tests are assessing reading and writing together―Are you ready?

I wish students would interact with a text on their own…I wish it wasn’t like pulling teeth to get them to elaborate their thinking. Wish no more, because bestselling author Gretchen Bernabei shows you how to guide students to be nimble at both short answer and extended responses. Her secret? "Teach students text structures, and they can pour their swirling ideas about the text into cogent writing."

Using the accessible format of fables, Bernabei and Hover share lessons and an appendix full of fables so you can teach students five concrete ways to respond to text in any genre:

1. Generate basic responses, using structures that support clarity
2. Craft fiction inspired by the text to unveil literary knowledge and imaginative response
3. Write essays about a theme or moral that display empathic and evidence-based interpretation
4. Answer open-ended questions by selecting a technique that reflects the text and their engagement
5. Use non-traditional formats like graphics and spoken dialogue to showcase their learning

The heat is on―beginning in third grade, state tests are now assessing reading and writing together. And that’s a good thing, but we’ve got some catching up to do. With Text Structures and Fables in hand, your students will swiftly and surely become text-savvy readers and writers.

A popular workshop presenter and winner of NCTE’s James Moffett Award in 2010, Gretchen Bernabei has been teaching kids to write in middle school and high school classrooms for more than thirty years. In addition to four other professional books and numerous articles for NCTE journals, she is the author of National Geographic School Publications’ The Good Writer’s Kit, as well as Lightning in a Bottle, a CD of visual writing prompts.

With more than 30 years in education, Jayne Hover has taught elementary, middle, and high school and been an administrator in several roles. She loves helping kids develop confidence through writing and has been instrumental in improving scores drastically on state-mandated tests. Jayne is a co-author of Crunchtime (2009, Heinemann), Text Structures from Nursery Rhymes (2018, Corwin), and Text Structures and Fables, Teaching Students to Write About What They Read (2023, Corwin). She lives near San Antonio, Texas and enjoys spending time with her husband, Jim.