Episode 392: The Easiest Way to Add Informational Texts Without Adding More Work

In today's Teaching Middle School ELA podcast episode, we break the myth that informational text requires a massive unit and replace it with a quiet, repeatable five-minute Friday habit. One short passage, one clear skill, four or five questions, and clean data you can act on without extra planning.

• Shifting from big nonfiction units to small weekly habits
• Five-minute Friday routine with single-skill passages
• Sources for short, skills-based informational texts
• Using repetition to build durable reading skills
• Collecting clean data to target instruction
• Keeping directions consistent to lower friction
• Balancing literature-heavy units with standards coverage
• One-month trial plan and quick adjustments

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Transcript

Welcome And Mission;

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. We are talking about a really simple way to add informational texts to your curriculum without adding any more work to your plate. Because I know for a lot of teachers, informational texts can be seen as like, oh my gosh, I literally cannot add one more thing to my plate. So if that is you and this is a challenge for you, um, where I'm just gonna give you a really simple piece of advice that's gonna make a difference. So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune in to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. So the first thing that I want to start with is kind of I think a lot of the narrative around including informational text into our units is that it's this kind of bigger undertaking that makes it feel like something we can't easily incorporate into our classroom. So there might be something like, you know, let research projects hit the informational standards or inquiry-based learning projects, or designing text sets or finding informational texts that go with your literature unit, which is fine, right? All of that stuff we absolutely can and probably should be doing. And also, the reality is that a lot of us are kind of sitting in survival mode where we can't even make copies for tomorrow, let alone go to that extent of designing that type of curriculum to incorporate into what we're teaching. And so today I want to challenge something that you might believe about informational texts. And if I can shift this one thing for you, I think it could really change how you approach teaching informational text. And the belief that I want to challenge is that most teachers, and in fact, most blog posts, most podcast episodes, as I was doing research for this episode, showed that teaching informational texts means adding something big, a unit, a project, a whole new curriculum strand. And because for a lot of us, the narrative that we're given and that we see that it's big, it gets pushed to another day. Oh, I'll have to deal with it later. I can't, I can't address that right now. Right. And that happens to me sometimes in the business with big projects. It's like it's so big, I can't even approach it. And so one of the things that I want you to think about with this is that if we can break it down into smaller pieces or we can view informational text through a smaller lens and not this huge unit, then it's not gonna get pushed to someday when you have time, or someday when you're less overwhelmed, or someday when you can plan it properly, that you're actually gonna sit down and incorporate informational text into your units. And this one shift about teaching informational texts of stopping the belief in our brains that it has to be this big, difficult, perfectly incorporated thing into our curriculum is going to make a difference for you. And we're gonna shift your belief from that. Oh my God, it's so big, I can't even do it, to shifting teaching informational texts as like a weekly habit. So we treat it instead of this big event or this big unit, we're creating a habit around informational texts in our classroom. And when I get into the episode a little bit more, this will make sense to you. So, what I want you to think about with informational texts is instead of it being this big to do, perhaps informational texts could just be a simple routine in our classroom. Like, what if you saw informational texts as a five-minute routine? That it's something so small, so consistent that you don't even have to think about doing it. It just happens. And I think that's the easiest way to more consistently add informational text to your classroom is to stop treating it like this big thing, right? That's not to say, especially if you're an EB teacher and you follow our scope and sequence, that's not to say that we don't have informational text units that we're teaching. But a lot of the times our curriculum is very literature heavy, right? So we hit a lot of those reading for literature standards, but we're not hitting a lot of the reading for informational text standards. And that's where we start to get like anxious and oh my gosh, I've got to include these things and blah, blah, blah. And so I think when we treat informational text like a routine, then we are able to easily incorporate it on a consistent basis and not spend a ton of our brain power thinking about it. And the moment that we do this and we have this shift in our mind, it makes teaching informational texts so much easier. And so that's what I want to give you today is just like a really basic system that you can use, a routine habit that you can use in your classroom that is so simple, it felt silly to me to even record this episode. And also, sometimes the simplest things that are right in front of our nose, we just can't see, right? Because we're so bogged down and overwhelmed. So, what I'm going to suggest that you do is if you are an E B teacher and you have information to our access rather to our skills-based passages on informational text, you're gonna use the skills-based passages for that. If you're not an EB teacher, Common Lit 360, uh, is it Common Lit? I think it's just Common Lit, the free version, has um free, what's the word of looking for, skills-based passages on their website that you can use. And every Friday, you're gonna grab one of those informational text reading passages that focuses on one skill. Students are gonna read it, they're gonna write answer four to five quick questions, and that's it. There's no slideshow, there's no lesson plan, there's no mini lecture. It's literally students are just reading, answering, and you're doing a quick check. This could literally just be your Friday warm-up, or it could be your Friday exit ticket. It could be a 10-minute filler on Friday when your lesson ends early. But whatever you're gonna do, you're just gonna do it at the same time every single week, and it's just gonna be consistent and it's just what you do. And if your students grown, oh well, it's short. It takes five minutes. Too bad, so sad. That's what I would tell my students. Too bad, so sad, we're just gonna do it. And we're doing it because this is helping you with test prep. This is helping you acquire uh skills that you need, right? Like you can pitch it to them however you want to pitch it to them. But what's beautiful about it is this is a very simple way to incorporate those in reading for informational tech skills that a lot of times get lost in the wayside to literature in your classroom. And I think what's powerful about it is it's so short and it's so consistent that over time we're able to help students build these skills repeatedly, right? And I talk about this with justification all the time. Like, we need our students to practice justification every single day in our classrooms through their discussions, right? Like it's just, it is what it is. They have to be working on it consistently. And I know for a lot of us, we're like, well, this sounds way too simple. How is that actually gonna build skills? And what I think is really important is that what the research tells us about how students actually learn is it's not gonna happen from one giant assignment, right? Just like students aren't gonna learn justification from writing one essay. Students build skills from short repeated practice, consistency over time. It's just like going to the gym, right? Like you can't expect to grow muscle if you're not doing it on a consistent basis. And so five minutes a week might not feel like much, but over the course of the school year, that's like 30 plus exposures to informational text, like that's significant. That's more than we're probably doing right now, right? That's what actually builds skills, not one like giant nonfiction unit in February that everybody hates. The other thing that makes this really powerful is that when these texts are shorter and when students are able to focus on one skill, they are naturally building like cle clean data for you to view. Right. So you're getting feedback of, oh, they don't understand text structure yet. Or, oh, they don't understand, I don't know, maybe have been a brain fart, citing evidence, whatever it might be. And that is what's so useful about these pointed skills-based passages that we have inside of the portal. If you're an E B teacher and you have access to them, that I want you to be using them. Like, don't just let them sit there in the portal and collect desk. Like, be incorporating them every single Friday, five minutes. That's it. This is what we do. And I think that when it's something doable, when we focus on one skill, when we don't overthink it, it's not this huge lesson, it's simply practice. It's like brushing your teeth every morning. We do this every Friday. Like, that's the vibe that we're going for. Because informational text doesn't have to feel overwhelming. And if we make it feel overwhelming, then we simply create resistance to actually doing it in our classroom. And so just create this quiet habit. Honestly, quiet habits are what change classrooms the most, are just the things that we do consistently over time. So I want you to try this for one month at least. Pick one Friday. If you're an EB teacher, go into the portal, grab a short skills-based passage. If you're not going common lit and grab one of their skills-based passages, and then you have four to five questions that you're focusing on. Pass it out, see what happens. And I promise you, it feels easier than you think. Like it's gonna be so much easier than you think it's gonna be. And you already have five minutes of your Friday planned every single Friday from now until the end of the school year. So I know it's a super simple strategy. It felt silly to me to even record this episode. And also, sometimes like the best ideas are so simple and they're just under our nose that we can't see them. So if you do use this and you are an EB teacher, let us know inside of the community that this is what you're gonna start doing so we can hold you accountable. And if you're not an EB teacher, let me know over on our Instagram at EB Academics. I would love to hear from you. Send me a message. I read all of them and I respond to all of them as well. All right, you guys, thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend. Um, happy end of February, and I will see you guys in March.