Tompkins Three Steps to Teach Expository Text Structure by Nerissa Jarvis

Teaching expository text structure involves helping students understand the organizational patterns commonly found in informational texts. Tompkins (1998) proposed three steps to teach expository text structure.

These are the steps:

1. Introduce an organizational pattern - Each text structure's signal words and phrases are introduced by the teacher, who also provides the pupils with a graphic organizer for each pattern.
2. Give students opportunities to work on the text - The instructor gives the pupils the opportunity to evaluate the text structures in nonfiction books—that is, informational novels. Students now understand the text's signal words and phrases that denote each text pattern. Graphic organizers are another tool they could use to show these patterns.
3. Invite students to write paragraphs using each text structure pattern - Writing exercises for the class as a whole should be the students' first writing assignment. Small-group, partner, and individual writing exercises should come next. This entails deciding on a subject and organizing the paragraphs using a graphic organizer. In order to create the final output, the students first draft their work utilizing key words and phrases for the text's structure. They then edit and rewrite it. To guarantee thorough coverage of all five text structures, the instructor might next repeat similar procedures for each one.

In teaching text structures, the teacher has to have knowledge of the different types of text structures for example:

• Description
• Sequence
• Cause and effect
• Compare and contrast
• Problem and solution

It is also important for the teacher to model each step before the students attempt the steps on their own.  

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