Teaching Informational Reading Skills

Your child can read, but can they make sense of real information?

They read an article and can’t tell you the main point. They copy straight from the source when they research. They believe whatever they read, or skip right past the chart. Nonfiction takes a different kind of thinking, and most of us were never shown how to teach it.

This guide shows you how. It gives you a clear, step-by-step way to teach the skills your child needs to understand, question and evaluate the information all around them, from recipes and museum signs to news articles and charts.

What changes when you use this guide

• Your child finds the main idea and the details that prove it.

• They can tell fact from opinion and notice when a writer is biased.

• They read graphs, charts and instructions with confidence.

• They take notes and research in their own words instead of copying.

How it works

Every skill grows through three simple stages:

• Basic: your child notices, recalls and describes what the text says.

• Build: your child explains their thinking and connects facts.

• Meaning: your child evaluates sources and connects ideas to real life.

Pick a skill, start at your child’s level and ask one question. That’s a complete lesson.

Inside each of the 16 skills, you’ll find:

• A clear explanation and what mastery sounds like

• A real-life teaching guide with examples

• Hands-on activities

• A printable thinking tool

• Ready-to-use guiding questions

• Support for struggling readers

• A mastery checklist

The 16 skills include main idea, text structure, text features, graphs and charts, author’s purpose, fact versus opinion, evidence, note-taking, research and more. (See the full list in the photos.)

Is this guide for you?

✔ Your child reads well but struggles with articles, charts or research

✔ You want your child to think critically about what they read

✔ You use a curriculum and want to go deeper, or you don’t use one at all

✔ You have a few minutes a day, not hours

It works best for upper elementary and middle school readers, and all three stages can grow with your child for years.

What you get: a 225-page digital guide, ready to download the moment you buy it. Print the pages you need or use it on your tablet.

Start today with the next article, label or chart you see together.

For personal, single-family use.