READING RESEARCH INTO THE CLASSROOM Drawing on Text Features for Reading Comprehension and Composing

exts have numerous structural and organiza-tional features that affect students ’ compre-hension and composing (Meyer & Wijekumar, 2007). Text features might include a serial ordering of events or descriptions of cause-and-effect relation-ships that are common to history and science texts, patterns of language rhythms in poetic texts, detailed (and often overlapping) illustrations to depict several story lines simultaneously in graphic novels, or the juxtaposition of gestures, visual images, and music representing characters ’ motives in digital texts. As our examples illustrate, students are meeting different forms of texts, both in and out of school. This is particularly true in classrooms where teachers are purposely integrating multiple forms of texts— such as informational texts paired with narratives, newspapers, and brochures—to address students ’ in-terests, life experiences, and personal questions, all the while building knowledge, skills, and strategies (Duke & Bennett-Armistead, 2003). In this column, we discuss possible challenges to students ’ compre-hension and composing as they relate to specific text features and draw on research to suggest instruction-al accommodations