How a Text Is Organized

1. Write four questions about dogs: "How does a puppy grow up?", "How are dogs and wolves alike and different?", "Why do dogs pant?", "What can you do if your dog will not stop barking?"
2. Ask: "Would the answers to these be organized the same way?" Draw out that each question makes the writer build the text differently: in time order, side by side, reason then result, and trouble then fix.
3. Label the four columns of the chart: "Chronology," "Comparison," "Cause and effect," "Problem and solution."

1. Display text A: "First, a monarch lays a tiny egg on a milkweed leaf. After four days, a caterpillar hatches. For two weeks it eats and grows. Next, it hangs upside down and forms a chrysalis. Finally, about ten days later, an adult butterfly crawls out." Ask: "What is the text doing?" Telling events in time order. Underline "First," "After four days," "Next," "Finally." Chronology.
2. Display text B: "Frogs and toads are both amphibians, and both lay eggs in water. However, frogs have smooth, wet skin, while toads have dry, bumpy skin. Frogs have long legs for leaping; in contrast, toads have short legs and often walk." It sets two things side by side. Underline "both," "However," "while," "in contrast." Comparison.
3. Display text C: "In the fall, days get shorter, so trees make less chlorophyll, the green chemical in leaves. As a result, the green fades and yellow and orange show through. Because the tree stops sending water to its leaves, they dry out and fall." It explains why something happens. Underline "so," "As a result," "Because." Cause and effect.
4. Display text D: "Plastic bottles from the streets were washing into our town's river. To solve this, the council put nets over the storm drains. Volunteers also hold a monthly clean-up, and stores now pay 10 cents for every bottle returned." Someone acts to fix a trouble. Underline "To solve this." Problem and solution.
5. Stop on the hardest pair. Ask: "Text C and text D both have a reason and a result. What is different?" Answer to fish for: in problem and solution, people act on purpose to fix something; in cause and effect, things happen with nobody trying to fix them.
6. Show why a single word is not enough: point out that text C opens with "In the fall," a time phrase, but the text is not chronology — it does not tell events in order, it explains why.

“Signal words are clues, not answers. First ask what the whole text is doing — telling events in order, putting two things side by side, explaining why, or fixing a trouble. Then check the signal words agree with you.”

1. Pairs get the signal word cards ("meanwhile," "similarly," "therefore," "one answer is," "later," "unlike," "led to," "to fix this") and sort them into the four columns.
2. Then they read a fifth text: "Long ago, people crossed rivers on fallen logs. Later, they tied rope bridges between trees. In the 1800s, iron bridges carried the first trains. Today, steel bridges stretch for kilometers." They name the structure (chronology) and underline the signal words.
3. The swap question: "If you rewrote the bridge text as a comparison of rope bridges and steel bridges, what would a reader lose?" The answer to fish for: the sense of change over time — how one kind led to the next.
4. Take answers and write one on the board.

“Every structure shows the reader something. Chronology shows change over time. Comparison shows likeness and difference. Cause and effect shows why. Problem and solution shows how people fixed something. Pick the structure, and you pick what the reader sees.”

1. Students complete the printable practice sheet alone, naming the structure of each short text and listing its signal words.
2. Early finishers rewrite text B (frogs and toads) as a chronology — for example, how a frog and a toad each grow from egg to adult.

1. Read: "The school field flooded every winter, so students could not play. To fix this, the school dug a drain along the edge." Ask: "Cause and effect, or problem and solution?" Problem and solution — someone acted to fix it, even though "so" appears.