Explicitness - Text Level

Definition : "The teacher makes explicit specific attributes of a text."

In addition to focusing on word level instruction it is also important that teachers make explicit specific attributes of a text, in particular through strategies with which to support text comprehension and creation. This comprehension of text includes strategies with which to bring background knowledge of a topic to the text being read, to comprehend texts literally as well as inferentially, to comprehend words and to use comprehension monitoring and 'fix-up' strategies.

Making specific attributes of a text explicit does not only mean formal comprehension strategy instruction. It may mean embedding the teaching of reading and writing into a wider context, using whole texts as the basis for instruction.

In the early years classrooms in our study the teachers often used whole texts to make specific attributes explicit when teaching writing as well as reading.