Informational+Texts

**Informational Texts**


**Title: “****A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (1996)** **Author:** David Foster Wallace **Genre:** Essay, Op-Ed, Humor **Description:** “A Supposedly Fun Thing” is an essay that DFW wrote about a Carnival Cruise vacation that he went on. He writes with humor, insight, and intelligence while he meditates on the mindless entertainment, questionable cuisine, and the forced sense of camaraderie among the vacationers. **Theme or Topic:** Consumerism. Vacation Culture. Modern American Life. Community. **Rationale:** David Foster Wallace was a great writer. He was incredibly versatile. The man was a triple-threat: he wrote great short stories, he wrote one amazing novel (//Infinite Jest//, 1996), and he also wrote terrific essays. He was both brilliant and accessible which is a rare combination of attributes. High school students can learn a great deal by reading Wallace: he writes with a charming blend of academic erudition and laid-back colloquialisms. Once the students have gotten the hang of writing essays using Standard Written English, they should see a witty, brilliant guy having fun with the language and with the formal conventions. This is a great piece for students to read, because it shows them how they can be both funny and smart at the same time.

**Lexile Level:** No Lexile Score Available Layout - Very Complex | Purpose & Meaning - Complex | Structure - Complex | Language Features - Very Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex
 * Text Complexity Rubric for Informational Texts: **

**Resources:** [|Charlie Rose Interviews David Foster Wallace.] An entertaining conversation between the great writer and the great interviewer. [|"Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise."] This is the essay as it first appeared in //Harpers Magazine// in January, 1996.

**Title: "How to Read a Book" (1972)** **Author:** Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Dore**n** **Genre:** Informational **Description:** This book offers strategies for developing reading skills. It promotes active reading, divides reading into categories or tasks, deals with the concept of author and book genres, and suggests that the ultimate task of the reader is to learn how to integrate or synthesize different ideas from a variety of texts. The work also offers a suggested list of texts for the student reader. **Theme or Topic:** Reading. Self Improvement. Education. **Rationale:** Some consider //How to Read a Book// to be dated, but many readers, including certain high school students, continue to find the work to be useful in developing a conceptual framework for the tasks of reading. Adler and Van Doren stress the importance of developing an active attitude towards reading, likening the process to a conversation with the author. Their categories for levels of reading can be helpful as students ponder how to approach different types of texts or levels of difficulty in texts. The list of suggested works as the end of the book remains arbitrary, but admittedly so.

**Lexile Level:** 910L Layout - Somewhat Complex | Purpose & Meaning - Somewhat Complex | Structure - Somewhat Complex | Language Features - Somewhat Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex
 * Text Complexity Rubric for Informational Texts: **

**Resources:**

** Author: ** Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein ** Genre: ** Informational ** Description: ** Cathcart and Klein offer a hilarious, unintimidating introduction to the realm of philosophy. Romping their way through a short history of philosophy, the authors use jokes to illustrate the thinking of key figures, from Socrates to the Existentialists. ** Theme or Topic: ** Humor. Philosophy. ** Rationale: ** //Plato and a Platypus// allows students to interact with key concepts of philosophy without requiring them to wade through daunting, massive tomes. While necessarily reductionistic, the work adequately conveys crucial themes from philosophy. The jokes are funny and surprisingly helpful in making the theories under discussion more understandable. The language of the text is approachable for students, yet still manages to introduce a modicum of specialized vocabulary. **Lexile Level:** 760L ** Text Complexity Rubric for Literary Texts: ** Layout - Simple | Purpose & Meaning - Somewhat Complex | Structure - Somewhat Complex | Language Features - Somewhat Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex
 * Title: "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes" (2007)**

**Publisher:** Prentice Hall **Genre:** Informational **Description:** This informational text by Prentice Hall contains literature from all over the world and varying time periods ranging from 3000B.C to contemporary work. **Theme or Topic:** Multiple themes.**Rationale:** This text contains multicultural literature that can apply to many students in the classroom. An online companion makes this text more accessible to students using technology and various learning styles. Layout - Simple | Purpose & Meaning - Somewhat Complex | Structure - Somewhat Complex | Language Features - Somewhat Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex **Resource:** []
 * Title: "Prentice Hall Literature: World Masterpieces" **
 * Lexile Level:** Not Available
 * Text Complexity Rubric for Literary Texts:**

**Title: "Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar: Grade Twelve" (2006)** Layout - Simple | Purpose & Meaning - Somewhat Complex | Structure - Somewhat Complex | Language Features - Somewhat Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex []
 * Publisher:** Prentice Hall
 * Genre:** Informational
 * Description:**This informational text contains chapters on writing, grammar, and mechanics, as well as academic and workplace skills.
 * Rationale:** This text is helpful to students who want to be better writers. It also comes with an online companion to give students a variety of learning tools to help them with grammar and mechanics.
 * Theme or Topic:** Multiple themes.
 * Lexile Level:** Not available.
 * Text Complexity Rubric for Literary Texts:**
 * Resource:**

**Title: “****Guns, Germs, and Steel”** **Author:** Jared Diamond**Genre:** Non-fiction **Description:** This book analyzes how current first world nations have the power that they currently do since there are plenty of resources in the third world nations. It's author posits that due to changes in climate, access to technology, trends of diseases over time, and patterns of trade over many different eras, third world peoples endured all the wrong trends causing them to be left behind while other civilizations advanced. This book would be a great informational text to read in a unit on poverty because it makes a case that the plight of certain peoples has nothing to do with genetic deficiencies and everything to do with a trend of developments each made possible by a set of particular preconditions. And example of this is the disease and greater technology that Europeans brought to the Americas which gave them an advantage over the native peoples--the diseases alone wiped out masses of people.. **Theme or Topic:** Authority. Power. Technology. War. **Rationale:** This book is a must read for anyone interested in why the human world is organized the way it is and I believe could be used as easily in an English class as a social studies class. Its author is a scholar at UCLA who has spent a large part of his life trying to make sense of why certain civilizations have power and others do not. His main point is that the current power structure has nothing to do with genetic superiority of different races, rather chance and luck relating to many different forces. **Lexile Level:** No Lexile Score Available Layout - Very Complex | Purpose & Meaning - Complex | Structure - Complex | Language Features - Very Complex | Knowledge Demands - Somewhat Complex **Resources:** @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_germs_and_steel [|PBS Intro: Gun, Germs, Steel Pt. 1]
 * Text Complexity Rubric for Informational Texts: **